Engagement and Activism

Hello, everyone. I hope you're doing well. You'll never guess what? I really had it in my mind to not say anything at all tonight and just take questions, and then somehow, somehow, I thought I might say something [laughs], so I hope that it's helpful. There'll be plenty of time for questions. It shouldn't be too long, but why don't we start with a little bit of silence together?

Settling into the body. Groundedness, but openness too. Bright awareness and sensitivity pervading the whole space of the body. Just keep opening that space of attention, of sensitivity, when it shrinks. And within that, how is the heart doing right now? Just whatever you notice in terms of the movements, the tone, the emotion in the heart right now. Again, noticing, sensitive, letting it be there. Can it be a relationship of care -- connection, care, holding with whatever it is in the heart right now? So, body, heart, intention for this time together. Just reaccessing, tapping into, reminding yourself of your intention for this time together. Can you see the beauty of that intention? Can you feel the beauty, the nobility of that intention? Is it possible to feel in your energy body, in your heart, a sense of alignment, of devotion even, to that intention? Body, heart, intention based in, open to, including all those three. Can the awareness spread out, reach out, and somehow sense into the connections between us right now? A sense of togetherness, collected intention, bond, care, participation, community, heart, body, and soul. Knowing this, feeling it, recognizing it. Body, heart, intention, togetherness. And lastly, just the recognition of the dependent arising, the dependent co-arising of this whole situation, this whole context, this whole meeting. Whether or not you say anything, you ask a question, you're participating. Your attention, your energy, your care, your aliveness contributes to the field, adds to the beauty and the aliveness and the possibility of the field. Sometimes it's easy to think, "Oh, I don't really make a difference" -- sometimes we don't even think that -- but you do make a difference. This depends on all of us.

I wonder if it's possible, as we go through this evening, to have mindfulness remember those five aspects, just to remind yourself at different times: (1) body awareness, (2) heart, (3) intention, and the alignment with intention, (4) tapping into the sense of togetherness -- that's one, two, three, four -- and (5) fifth is the recognition, the acknowledgment that this is a co-dependent arising. We're all making this happen. We're all feeding it. Anything that happens in mind, body, soul over there, even if you're on the other side of the world, is actually shaping what happens here tonight, and the whole flavour of it. So, really, really getting a sense if you can of the fact of participation and dependent arising.

So there are five things, if that's not too much to ask as a sort of exercise in mindfulness, just periodically checking in, especially in these virtual forums when we perhaps sometimes need to take a little more care of the quality of the connection with each other. Does that all make sense? Yeah. Okey-dokey.

[7:48] I will say a few things. I have no idea who suggested this topic or what exactly they were after, "Engagement and Activism." But a few things sort of came up in my mind and heart, and I just offer them in the hope that they'll be helpful, and then there should be plenty of time for questions. So, a few things. When we're engaged in some kind of activism, or there's some kind of engagement, it's usually the case that whatever we're engaged in or whatever is the realm of our engagement, it's often some area where at least we feel (and probably along with many others) it's not getting enough care in the bigger system or politics or society of things. We're approaching something with a feeling, with a perception that this needs to be cared for more, and therefore, we need to get engaged. If we felt like it was already cared for enough and taken care of, we wouldn't feel like we needed to get engaged with it. That already sets up a certain emotional relationship with something, and there's already a perception there from which certain things follow.

I don't want to dominate this discussion necessarily with issues about climate change and species extinction, the kind of engagements that I get most called to, but if we are talking about those two, climate change and species extinction, you could say those two together constitute perhaps the most extreme occurrence or the most extreme unfolding of events, whatever you want to say, the most extreme happening or thing in the whole history of humanity. As far as I can see, there's absolutely nothing that compares. And seeing that, seeing the extreme gravity and emergency of the situation -- and like I said, this goes for anything that we're engaged with, because there will be a perception there's not enough care, there's not enough attention to this. But if you take just those two for a second, the most extreme sort of unfolding of a disaster in the whole history of humanity. We're talking, I don't know, a few million years? How long has humanity been around? I don't know. And in that context, or while that's going on, there is, at the same time, things changing perhaps a little bit, but a kind of attitude. You can look around and say, "People are not paying enough attention. It's just business as usual. Everything's going on as usual in this society." That incongruence, incredibly profound tragedy, unbelievable magnitude, the most extreme thing that's happening in the history of all humanity, in all the history of humanity, compared with, "Let's go shopping in the mall on Saturday afternoon" or whatever it is, business as usual, corporations running as usual -- that incongruence can create an enormous frustration, enormous frustration in the being, as well as, of course, grief and fear and all of that.

So if we're engaged, the whole setup of the situation is set up emotionally and in terms of perception that there's a -- 'tension' is not even the right word, but a certain gestalt there that's got a lot of difficulty in it. And if you get busy as an engaged activist, then oftentimes you're super busy. It's super crazy, how busy you are before an action or whatever it is. So somehow with all of that, we have to ask: how am I going to take care of my resourcing? How am I going to support my stamina, my ability to stay steady and keep showing up? What actually is my realistic capacity here, and what is overdoing it? And what is it to take care of that? And how do I increase my capacity? These kinds of questions become really central, paramount if one's actually engaged in an ongoing way. So this is a little bit what I want to go into, and then of course, we can open up to questions that have nothing to do with this, and comments, etc.

[12:52] So one piece just has to do with what we might call 'heart work.' How developed are my skills around my, with my own emotions, and the whole range of emotions? How rare that is actually. Even among Dharma people, and Insight Meditation practitioners, where we put a lot of stress on emotion and being in the body and being with experience, what I see as a teacher, that is still quite rare, for people to have a really developed range in terms of their art for working skilfully with emotions, really skilfully. And even though a lot of people are in psychotherapy these days, it still surprises me that a person can be in therapy weekly for five years, eight years, and somehow they still don't have a lot of skill with their emotions. You think, what's happening? Why is this not being taught? Why is this not being given attention to? Why are people not even seeing there's something to develop here? To me, that's a really, really important piece. Can I actually notice what's happening? How's my skill at noticing? "I just feel completely overwhelmed. I want to rip the paper up and assassinate Donald Trump" or whatever it is. Can I actually notice what emotions are going on? Usually when we feel overwhelmed or distraught, there's a whole bunch of emotions going on, and they just get mixed together, and we feel overwhelmed and confused.

So one of the beginning arts is actually learning to discriminate: there's grief, and there's fear, and there's worry, and there's anger, and there's frustration or whatever it is. Learning to pull apart the strands of the spaghetti in the emotional soup will actually help, both in terms of what do I need to do and what's going on, and not supporting a kind of overwhelm that comes when it all gets stuck together. So, can I notice? Can I disentangle, and then maybe even learn -- "Okay, actually, what was just a state of, 'Ah! I'm going crazy,' actually I see there are five or six different emotions there. Let me just take my time and perhaps rest with each one, give each one a particular kind of attunement and sensitivity"? How's my capacity to tolerate both difficult emotions and beautiful emotions -- joy and love, but difficult ones as well? What's my capacity to tolerate grief, for example (you look at the world, or a certain situation, or a certain situation of social injustice), my capacity to tolerate anger?

So this extending of our heart's capacity, that's also a really, really important art. How does that happen? It doesn't just happen by itself. How does it happen? And then, what about skilful responses, skilful responses to this emotion, this grief or this anger, but also skilful responses from this grief and anger? From this grief and anger, what's a skilful response into the world? What's an unskilful response into the world? So there's a relationship both with the emotion, and then from the emotion, so to speak, from us, from the emotion into the world. All this needs development. It needs attention to develop the art of all this. It's one of the most beautiful and important things for a human being to feel comfortable with and to expand their range with, and it is really rare.

And then, of course, still talking about the heart work and resourcing, can we cultivate what the Buddha would call skilful emotions, or kusala, wholesome emotions, wholesome mind states, so that we have this wellspring of well-being and joy? Something not that's there all the time, necessarily, but that we can dip into, and know that well is there, and know that peace is there. I know that love is there. I know that stillness and equanimity, or whatever it is, is there, or that joy. All of this and more constitute aspects of what we might call 'heart work,' and a really, really important, important part.

[17:51] There are also questions about rhythms. If I get really busy in activism, when is it the place and the time to actually step out and re-resource -- maybe retreat, maybe a shorter period of resourcing or whatever? And people do that differently, who are engaged.

That's one piece, and that's a big piece around heart work. Second piece is related. Let's put it this way: there is the possibility of developing my meditative sense of devotion, okay? Devotion is a huge subject, and it has all kinds of dimensions, but I just want to talk about the most basic, without getting into the whole soulmaking and divine thing just yet. Meaning*,* as we did actually at the beginning: here's a sense of something I care deeply about. Here's a sense of something I want to do something about and take a stand about or in relation to. There's an intention, and I can feel a devotion of my being towards that intention, even if it's not got anything about the divine in it -- leave that aside. There's a sense of my being in relation to this, and I care about it, and I want to give myself to it, and I pledge myself to it, and I align my being wholeheartedly, body, heart, and soul, with that thing that I care about, whatever this area of engagement we're talking about. When I feel that, and when I do it, something happens in my body, and this is really important. There's a sense of alignment in the body and energization in the body, in the energy body. That's invaluable. It's extremely valuable. A person may be very devoted, but never really tapping into that energy body sense in a meditative way. You can actually feel it and sit there -- sit or stand or whatever it is, and I feel the vertical axis energized, the whole body energized in relationship with this issue and my devotion, and they're empowering. One is empowered, cohered, harmonized, strengthened, given strength by that meditative feeling into of the sense of devotion, allowing it to fill out and align the very being.

We're talking about a kind of energy meditation here in relation to my intention, what I aspire to, what matters most to me. That kind of meditation -- even can be just a couple of minutes here and there -- it will bring strength, sustainability, as I said, that resource, stamina, all of that. It is an impermanent sense, meaning that we're not going to feel that all the time, that sense of energized, upright alignment in relation to what I'm devoted to -- and especially if you're blocking a bridge, or on Signal trying to coordinate some meeting, and there are a million Signal messages coming in and you're the point person or whatever. You know, this sense of alignment is going to come and go. Don't expect it to be permanent. It's impermanent, but that's not a problem. It's absolutely not a problem. If I think it needs to be here all the time, then I will create a problem in relation to it. What we really want is for it to be accessible enough in quiet moments, at least.

Sometimes, it might be accessible even in a really hairy, intense situation, if I'm finding the right way: "Okay, all this crazy stuff is going on, but this is what I'm concentrating on right now. I'm standing here, maybe the police are right here -- this is what I'm concentrating on." It's not to say it's unavailable then, but don't expect it to be permanent. It just needs to be accessible enough, in and out, dipping in and out, and that regular dipping in and out will sustain us. It will give us fuel. It's like charging your phone. You plug it into the socket, it charges, and then you're good to go.

[22:32] Okay, so that's another thing. A third thing, you know, sometimes, like I said, we're looking at a certain situation of social injustice, of racial injustice, or ecological injustice, whatever it is, and there's this disparity between the sense we have of the urgency and the import and the magnitude of the situation on the one hand, and on the other hand, the sense of it seems like so many people don't even notice or care, and certainly those in power don't seem to notice or care, for instance. And of course, a very human reaction would be, "I feel completely frustrated." It's enormously frustrating. There's a mega-mismatch of power there, a disparity of power. Here's a situation that needs an enormous amount of resources and energy and attention, and I don't have it in me personally to switch that around, and there's this massive infrastructure of societal and economic and corporate or whatever that's entrenched and seems to have all the power. Normal human reaction would be to feel frustrated -- enormous frustration. Frustration can very easily go to anger. It's related to power and powerlessness. When we feel powerless, we often feel frustrated. When we feel frustrated, it often goes to anger. Anger, if we're not careful, goes to ill-will and to hatred. And I want to make sure there's a distinction here between anger and ill-will. 'Ill-will' means I actually want someone to suffer. My will, my wish is that they are ill, they have an ill fate. Anger is fire. It's wanting to change something. So there's a step. I don't equate the two. And hatred again is a whole step further. But the question is: what do we do with those kinds of emotions when they come up, if they come up?

We have lots of resources from the perspective of, let's say, classical Buddhadharma -- for example, mettā. And just really, if you notice, "Okay, there's frustration, there's anger. I can see, I'm aware that there's a possibility of ill-will towards whoever it is," can I just really, really get the mettā going? It's beautiful to see -- I don't want to, as I said, limit this to climate change and species extinction, but from the last Extinction Rebellion (XR) thing in London, the relationship or the attitude of the protesters and the activists to the police. There's a completely polarized situation. These police are five yards in front of me, and they're going to arrest me and a bunch of other people, and the activists were telling police, "We love you. We love you. We love you. We love you." It's very disarming for the police to a certain extent [laughs], kind of incongruent to how they usually have to deal with things, but secondly, whether a person has heard the word mettā or not before, it's doing something to the whole relationship with that situation. So mettā, mettā, mettā, mettā.

Second possibility is the contemplation of -- how would you say? -- dissipating our tendency to fixate on another and blame them and then be angry at them; recognizing the emptiness of the other. For example, whatever it is, whatever social injustice or ecological injustice it is, we all have the seeds, and we all have, at one time or another in our life, perpetrated something to some degree similar to what we see being perpetrated. I mean, certainly we're all burning carbon, but more than that, we all sometimes just don't care about it. We just want to get whatever we want to get done, and we're not really caring about the ethics of it. Or we're choosing out of selfishness, or we're choosing out of greed, or we're reactive and have done something to harm someone. Rather than seeing in terms of self, seeing that these seeds of the three kilesas, the three defilements, they don't belong to anyone. They're sort of just what humans do. So I see it there, but I also see it here, and I see it in my friend, too, and this begins to level out or dissolve the sense of self and other and the blame and the kind of entrenched enemy-making that comes that can then lead to ill-will, etc.

[28:08] Third possibility. Let's put it in the classical box for now, but it may or may not be classical (it doesn't really matter). When there is frustration or anger, and this goes back to actually what we called 'heart work,' do I have the skill, do I know how to kind of support an energetic alchemy, so that that frustration and anger, or anger, becomes strength and power? Can I do that? Do I know how to do that with the feelings of frustration and anger? Or do I just boil in them or act out of them? Strength and power are coherent, harmonized, potent, able to act, able to think, able to be attuned, etc. The danger of frustration and anger is there can be an inner collapse into powerlessness or reactivity or toxicity or poison -- all kinds of things. Do I know how to do that? It involves working with the energy body, feeling, allowing the pressure of the frustration or the anger to build as if there's a kind of cauldron there. The body is a cauldron, and it's filling, and you let it fill. And then, within that, if you pay attention in certain ways, you actually see, "Huh, there are actually different potentials here of different kinds of emotion, different kinds of wavelength within this mix of what just seems like frustration and anger." If I begin to just allow it to be, not with a big space, but just a kind of energy body-size space, let it push at the sides, feel the pressure of it, feel the heat, in the pressure and the heat and the sort of tendency of it to expand, it is actually feelings of strength and power. And if I start to notice them, and start to just delicately tune my attention to those, the feelings of strength and power, my very noticing of them amplifies them in the mix. Then the toxic anger can decrease, and the strength and power increase, and all I've done is just allow in a certain way, in my energy body. And by paying attention to certain wavelengths, it amplifies them. Then I feel in a very different relationship with myself and with whatever's going on.

[31:09] Then there's the whole area of emptiness, and maybe I will leave that for now, but there's actually something very important about emptiness and engagement, and there are ways we can pick up emptiness, the teachings of emptiness, where they're either really unhelpful or they don't have the full kind of power that they could in relation to these kinds of issues, in relation to ethical issues. So, if you're interested in that, you can ask me at the end. But if you're going to invoke emptiness, or if you're going to look to emptiness and teachings of emptiness for help around ethics and ethical stances and engagement and activism, it's important that we're aware that there are different versions of emptiness, if you like, different understandings and ways of approaching it, and some will be much more integrated and imply much more an involvement with ethics and a care with ethics and all of that than others. Okay? So, I'm just flagging that; we can go into it if you want later, but that's very important.

[32:30] All that we could call 'classical.' It doesn't really matter where you draw the divisions. Then, of course, there's the potential for those who want and those who are interested to allow the relationship with engagement and activism to become soulmaking. Now you could say we're out of the realm of classical Buddhadharma. Here, to me, it opens up a much greater range of possibility. Anger is not just something either to quell, to replace with mettā, or transform. In the imaginal, we're actually able to let the anger itself give rise to an image which might still stay angry, but it's potent, and it won't harm. There's no ill-will in it. When we allow our engagement and the whole relationship with it to become soulmaking, and the relationship with ethics and ethical stance to become soulmaking, as I said, the range increases, but there's a safety net because of what we call in the soulmaking teaching the element of the 'theatre-like' quality, or the 'imaginal Middle Way,' or the 'neither real nor not real.'

So we can have an anger. We can even have an enemy. We can even have an image of ourself as some kind of wrathful deity, or we're at war with whoever it is or whatever it is, but that whole image has a theatre-like quality, so it has all the potency, all the sustaining nourishment, all the inspiration, but without being reified. We're not going to go out and beat anyone up or kill anyone or hate anyone like that. What we've got there is a whole possible expansion of our range of what's possible in the psyche and in relationship to what's going on. And the images might involve war and battle and ripping things apart or enemies apart or whatever it is, but it's theatre-like. So the range of self-image that is kind of workable and helpful and allowed in the soulmaking practice is much, much larger than the range of self-image if we just go with a sort of typical Buddhadharma, which tends to just be kind of quite equanimous and gentle and meek and not polarized and all that.

[35:30] The sense of the world, too, is different. I mean, certainly contemporary, let's say, Theravādan Buddhadharma sees the world, or doesn't have much to say about what the world is, so that the usual way we see the world from the perspectives of contemporary Buddhadharma are just the way that the contemporary culture sees the world. It's a bunch of purposeless atoms that are cohering in different forms, and it forms a kind of backdrop for whatever events and unfoldings in my personal practice, and either the increase or the decrease of dukkha, and my journey there. Without a kind of soulmaking perspective, there's not the sacredness of the world. There's not the dimensionality and the divinity of the world. The world is kind of just left as it is.

[36:28] Self-image, possibility for self-sense, greatly expanded in soulmaking practice. Possibility for world-sense, hugely expanded, vertically and everything. Possibility also of the other -- I can have, as I said, this other, whoever it is, Shell or Exxon Mobil or whatever can be the enemy, but it's not reified. It's a theatre-like quality; it's got plenty of room there.

Whose desire is this? Whose desire to get involved? Whose care? Whose desire to do something about this, whatever it is? In classical Dharma, it's either mine or it's not mine. In Soulmaking Dharma, it can be mine, it can be not mine, but it can also be the angel's, or it can be God's desire coming through me. All this makes a huge amount of difference. If I've only got 'mine' or 'not mine,' and 'mine' is usually seen as problematic in Buddhadharma, then I've got 'not mine,' and when I look at my desire or my passion through the lens of 'not mine,' it tends to attenuate my desire. The fire goes out. When I can really sense with soul my desire, my love, my passion, I can have the fire without the problematic grip so much.

[38:10] One of the last aspects just for now about soulmaking perspectives here is the relationship with time. Again, classical Buddhadharma, or engagement kind of sustained by or inspired by classical Buddhadharma perspectives, let's say -- when we're looking to classical Buddhadharma to empower and sustain our engagement or activism, what do we see in terms of time, the time-sense? Either time is just, there's the teaching of impermanence: everything is impermanent. And then sometimes that's used in an almost laissez-faire, "Oh well, species are impermanent," or whatever it is, a not even very wise way. Or we look at the whole activism with only a realist notion of time, meaning, "How long have we got to turn things around about the climate, for example, or this situation?" We can only look in terms of the practical outcome in the future. So we're looking for a certain change in the future on the material level, and it might be a sense of "We need to do it by this time or that time." Now, of course, that's a really important point of view, but what happens to my soul and my capacity to sustain if that's the only view, only relationship with time I have?

Again, if things can open up more imaginally, then the relationship with time can have that eternal dimension. You know, that warrior who's combating against this particular social injustice, they will always be fighting against that. So at least two levels of time perception can go on at once. Yes, there's an urgent imperative to shift something by a certain date -- again, if we're talking about climate change, prevent X degrees of warming, whatever -- yes, absolutely. At another level, this war, this battle, this endless passion, endless striving, endless pouring out of creativity and devotion, it's always happening. It will go on forever from the perspective of that timeless realm.

We need to get a taste of this from the inside. You see when things can really become image, it's not that we need to make that happen; it's that we'll notice, "Oh, that is the nature of this imaginal sense of this. It really is eternal," and then that liberates me from the despair and the kind of paralysing fear in relationship to time limits and tipping points and all the rest of it. It's eternal. It's happening on another level -- not only on that level, of course, but there's always the kind of psychic resource of this other perspective. And these kinds of things, I think, can make an enormous amount of difference. They just take the whole thing, the whole sense of the whole thing, the whole sense of ourselves, the whole sense of what is happening and what we're doing -- they can take it to a whole other level.

[42:07] And we can look at certain injustices in the world, and certainly, again (sorry) if we look at climate change and species extinction, if we are able to hold that, hold those, climate change and species extinction, and just really, really make a marked difference, that would be -- I don't know what the word is -- almost a miracle, you know. It would be such a great achievement, and I don't mean, "Oh, isn't that a good thing." I mean really great, in the sense of like some extraordinary human achievement. At this point, given the situation, given the continuing trends, etc., given the momentum, it would be something really great, in the proper meaning of the word 'great,' to hold that, to turn it around.

I don't know what you think, but I was thinking, I don't think anything great -- really great, I mean -- manifests without whoever it is that's doing the great thing being stretched to their limits. I don't know what you think about that and how that sits, but I don't think anything great manifests without the person involved, the person working towards that being stretched to near their limits, and that means limits in terms of effort, maybe in terms of time, maybe in terms of heart and heart capacity, what we were talking about earlier, maybe in terms of just how much you can sustain a focus on something, the limits of our fears, the limits of our generosity. You think about Einstein's special theory of relativity. His wife said he basically went upstairs and locked himself in a room for three weeks -- I mean, he'd been working on it for years -- barely ate, barely slept. He's pushing himself really to the edge there. Martin Luther King came up in the last session -- someone really at the edge of, you know, assassination threats, and of course he did get assassinated. Really at the edge of what a human, what he felt that he could tolerate. If you've ever done a really big creative project, which I've done quite a few, and always it feels like, "This is really, really stretching me. It's at my limit." Or I was reading a biography of the physicist Richard Feynman, and countless times, he would just stay up all night working on a problem, you know? Sometimes he got something by the morning, sometimes he didn't. But just that willingness to kind of really extend oneself, stretch oneself.

[45:12] So this is very different than an ego or a superego saying 'should': "Oh, I should do more. I should, should, should." It's coming from something else. Where is it coming from? It's coming from soul-love, from the love of the soul. This is really, really important to distinguish the two, especially if someone like a teacher is saying, "Oh, I should stretch myself," or whatever. I'm really not talking about something coming from the ego or from the superego. I'm talking about something that's coming from the soul. But there's a reason I'm saying this: because there's a reciprocal relationship between the arising of image and meaningful stretch.

Just to back up, our context: we're talking about letting our relationship with engagement and activism be expanded by soulmaking and imaginal work, so that's what we're looking into right now. And there's a relationship between meaningful stretch and the arising of potent image. What do I mean? I mean, when, let's say, something about our engagement is allowed to become imaginal, and fill out that way, and gain that dimensionality in the self and other, world, and all the rest of it, that will enable us to stretch ourselves. It will enable us to extend and live at the limits for a while. It will give us stamina, almost more than anything else -- more than samādhi, more than emptiness, more than blah blah blah blah, is my experience. There's something about the power and the transformation that comes when an image is really alive that allows us to be stretched, and to be okay to be stretched for long periods of time. But there's a reciprocal relationship. When I am feeling stretched by something that is meaningful to me, something that I deeply care about, and I let it stretch me, that stretch, in the alchemy of it, it can give rise to image.

So image supports stretch and allows stretch. But sometimes people say, "I don't really get any image," or "There's no image in relation to this." It might be that a person is not actually letting themselves be stretched. They might be busy, they might be doing this or that or whatever, but a meaningful stretch -- I mean, taken in the direction of one's fears or one's capacities in some realm -- where there's a meaningful stretch, something happens in the sort of alchemy of the being, that the meaningful stretch itself -- what could we say? -- soul responds to it by giving us an image, and that image allows us to sustain. It gives us power. It works through us. Stretch and image go together. Sometimes people say to me, "I don't really get any images," and not always, but in some instances, the reason why this or that person is not getting so much image is because they're not living in a way that's stretching themselves. They're not letting themselves be meaningfully stretched, and yes, you could look at their life and their being very busy, and they're doing good stuff or whatever, but in terms of their ethical being and the challenge, they're not actually letting themselves be challenged around what's deeply meaningful to them, and so soul doesn't respond by giving an image.

That word 'imaginal' came from Henry Corbin. And he uses the word barzakh, I think it is in Persian, but it means something like 'boundary' or 'limit.' And the imaginal, metaphysically, the philosophy behind it is, in his version, the imaginal is really an in-between. It's an in-between the sensible realm and what they call the realm of the intelligibles, the ideas. But the point right now is that it's a liminal realm. It's at the edge. So there's something about edges and limits, when they're meaningful to us, that will give birth to an image that can then feed back and empower ... we can say empower us, yes, but empower basically the flowing into our lives of that image and what that image wants to do, what that angel wants. So when an image is really operating in that way, and we're sustained by an image in that way, our life may not feel or look and may not actually be very balanced. So sometimes we say, "I want to balance my activism with my meditation," and that's great. You can do that in different ways. But at other times, we're not in a state of balance. We've still got a capacity to sustain, but it doesn't look like balance. It might look mad, but something else is operating.

[50:50] Last thing. In relation to what I said earlier about the devotional sense, also this image sense can come and go. In fact, it will come and go. It's not going to be there all the time. There are ways that it can be there very much in the background of certain interactions. It might be there in the heat of some intense situation, but it might be that either just before or after some kind of intense engagement or difficult stretch or work, that's where the image does its work in our soul, and it's enough to sustain us. We dip in and out of connection with it.

Very last thing. You know, if or when we open up the sense of soulmaking in relation to all this, or if you're called to do that, or if you're interested in that, what it also does is it opens up the reasons why we're doing something. So I'm doing this for this and this situation, of course, and I want this and this to change. And added to that, on top of that, so to speak, comes "I'm doing this for the angel. I'm doing this for this imaginal figure." And then what that means is even if the ship goes down, even if it's a hopeless case, even if I will be ruined and bankrupt and dead by the end of it, I'm doing it for the angel, and that makes it worth it, regardless of the result. And do we care about the result? Of course we care about the result. Are we working towards a material result? Of course we are, but there's a whole other level that involves, "Actually, I'm doing this for the angel." They're not separate. It's like another dimension of the same love, of the same calling, of the same activity. So, I don't know -- that may or may not make sense to some of you right now, and that's fine, but it could be a seed for some time.

Okey-dokey. That was it, what I wanted to say. Again, that was longer, so I apologize, but shall we open it up? Anyone want to ask anything? It doesn't have to be about anything I said, so it's just open. Is that Nicole? Were you asking?

Q1: navigating between classical and Soulmaking Dharma, and engaging people who use spiritual bypassing

Yogi: [53:45] I think you touched on it a little bit, the question that I had, but maybe there was more. It is in relation to environmental activism, and my own engagement of it has definitely come from soulmaking and from this sort of growing sense of soulful experiences with sort of people and animals and plants, but then this larger image of this kind of web of soul moving through the world, made up of all those tiny images. And that, in me, creates a very passionate and loving desire to take ethical action in response. I definitely relate to the challenges of the heart of that. I'm definitely up to like, "Okay, I need to learn more heart skills," so I relate to that in what you're saying.

And part of the way that sometimes is helpful is this other response, this other idea you mentioned briefly that comes from maybe more classical Dharma, but also may not be that deep, is of impermanence. And there can even be a soul-sense that there's a larger game -- sometimes I can sense into it, "Okay, maybe there's a larger story to everything that's happening that I don't fully understand," and that can calm my heart and can be quite grounding, but there's also a danger in unengagement. Like right now, I'm talking with a lot of people about climate grief, and I live in a place with a lot of sort of New Age spirituality, and I see a lot of shutting down of like, "It's all impermanent and we're all going to die anyway," and kind of this using this spiritual bypass to get around the grief.

But anyway, I feel this tension between certain understandings of maybe more classical Dharma and then what soulmaking is creating, and sometimes leaning more towards classical Dharma can help me with the heart challenges, which have been challenging for me -- more in grief, less in anger. When I lean more into the soulmaking, it can be harder to hold, just for where I'm at in my practice, so I'm wondering both about my own practice and leaning in either direction, but also then in engaging with people in emotional activist contexts, when you get that kind of, "Well, everything is impermanent and, you know, what do we really know?"

Rob: [56:10] Yeah, thank you. If I understand, there are maybe at least a couple of parts to your question. One is, "What's my response when I feel someone is (as you say) spiritual bypassing with a teaching of impermanence? What's my response to that?", and secondly, "What's my navigation between these different approaches of classical Dharma and more soulmaking?" Is that it? Yeah.

Yogi: Yeah.

Rob: Okay. So, the first one, in terms of others, yeah, I think, to me, those kinds of things are more about reading the situation that I'm in at any time, and what the actual possibility is. Sometimes the situation itself or my sense of where the person is at, and what they are wanting to hear or discuss or whatever, might just suggest that, "Don't even go there," you know? It's just not the right time, not the right kind of conditions.

But other times, you might, just in terms of one piece that you picked out, you know, because we can give all kinds of answers to that sort of spiritual bypassing and what a person can do, but I think the piece that you already mentioned, pointing at the grief and the need for feeling grief, opening to it, working with it, being together with it, having rituals around it, community around it, extending the heart's capacity. There's a way that that can be explained, and it's not too much of a stretch for people to understand, you know. If you start talking about, like, eternal dimensions, some people may be ... you know? But that one's a really, really important one, and perhaps if you sense that maybe there is some possibility with this person in this situation right now, there are maybe ways of talking about it that introduce it as, "Yeah, I see that, and what about this, you know, as an alternative?" Or just sharing, "Yeah, I kind of get that," and then, "I've also been thinking this." So you're not even telling them to do -- you're just sharing your journey, and it might make a difference to them right then, or it might just plant a seed. But personally, I tend to automatically just try to get a sense of the situation and what's actually feasible or realistic in the situation, what's kind of attuned to this situation, and then where to pitch, you know, whatever I'm saying.

But I think that grief thing is something that everyone kind of probably realizes, and then you have to think, "Okay, if a person's avoiding that, what is it about the grief that they're perhaps believing or fearing -- that I'm going to drown in it forever, that I'll be lost in it, that I'll be overwhelmed in it, I'll go crazy?" I don't know, you know? But almost offering responses to those kind of concerns that might be behind their choices a little bit. Does that ...? Yeah?

In terms of your practice -- it's interesting to me, you know; say I pick up a Dharma response or a soulmaking response or an emptiness response, this or that or that. If it leads to peace and calming down, but also disengagement, then I know something's gone a bit off. Okay? Now, disengagement is different than, "Okay, maybe I actually need to take a rest right now," you know -- don't look at the news for a day or whatever, or a short retreat, or just go sit or whatever it is. So disengagement, I mean more just this kind of, "I'm really moving away from the whole issue in a larger way." If it brings peace but also disengagement, something's a bit off.

If it brings peace, but that peace is helping to sustain my engagement, then whatever it is, whether it's impermanence or this or that, classical Dharma, soulmaking, it doesn't really matter, emptiness, this or that -- I'm on the right track, you know. As I said before, there are different approaches of emptiness, and in a way, it doesn't matter. What matters is that we're sensitive to the fruits of this or that perspective or approach, and we feel like, "Ah!" [exhales] I feel better, I feel more spacious, I feel more peaceful, I feel more joy or whatever it is, and therefore, I can sustain more. And then sustaining might have little holidays. It needs to have little holidays in it, you know. But if it's doing the opposite, then something's gone a little bit off. So I don't think there's a right or wrong. It's all open. Grab whatever you can, whenever you can; it's all good. But just like meditative practice, whatever we're engaging as a way of looking or a practice, one small part of the mind is always seeing, "What did that do? What's the result?" And if it's disconnected me, disengaged me, that's not so good. There's a way of feeling peace and energy and resource and all that, and still being pretty much engaged. Does that ...?

Yogi: Yeah, yeah, that helps. Thank you.

Rob: Okay, great.

Q2: importance of filmmaking and art, staying true to what you really care about

Rob: [1:02:02] Arjuna. Did you have a question, Arjuna?

Yogi: I'm in film school right now, and that's kind of, I'd say, taking up most of my time and space and energy, and I find that, I think the underlying reason that I'm pursuing filmmaking is from this care for the world underneath sort of participating in the world more directly, which is a shift from what I've been doing in the past -- having a lot of focus on inner kind of worlds. So there is this feeling, and I guess it's something that I had to come back to and return to often -- this remembering of, like, a love for the world, and what that means to me, and that being the motivation, that being the place of commitment. But then there's this, sometimes I feel the sense of, or this question of what, why, you know, is this important, does this matter? I mean, there seems to be these, like, very urgent survival kinds of questions, and film or art in general sometimes ... Does that seem clear as a question?

Rob: Yeah. So, 'does this matter' meaning does film school and filmmaking matter -- is that what you're saying?

Yogi: Yeah, in this, with all these other issues that are taking place, yeah.

Rob: Right, right, yeah. Thank you. I just really hear the love underneath your question. It's really touching, really beautiful. My opinion, and you're asking me, is that yes, it matters hugely. It matters --film, I was just thinking the other day, you know, how much money of the world goes into film and making films, most of which (I'm sorry if I sound opinionated) are just crap. [laughs] What are they doing? What are they offering the world? And you're talking about a multimillion dollar industry, billion dollar industry, billions of dollars. But a lot of people watch film, and nowadays it's potentially a very powerful medium, so if you can marry those two and find your way in the world making films that either obviously and explicitly engage certain themes or more indirectly. I think a lot of art works indirectly. I said in a talk, I think it was at Gaia House -- okay, you're listening to a Beethoven piece of music or John Coltrane or whatever. There are no words to it, and maybe the title is completely ambiguous, but something about the way that touches me makes me want to live differently. I can't even exactly understand it rationally, but it aligns me with a care and a deep love for life and nobility and all of that.

So as a filmmaker, you know, you might be ... it's just a portrayal of, it's a story about someone or something that's just got a lot of compassion in it or something, and that ends up affecting people's hearts and making them want to live differently. I really, really believe in the power of art, but you have to, or an artist has to, really kind of dig deep to really be aligned and alive with the relationship of what they love to their art. It has to have a lot of integrity and all that with it. If ego starts to come in and all the rest of it, it gets diluted; its power gets diluted.

So you're asking me: does it matter? I think potentially it's really, really important, and I wonder whether on some issues, change will happen more from media like film than it will through political dialogue or stuff like that. I don't know how it is where you live, but just looking at England right now and the whole Brexit thing, it's just blah blah blah, a lot of words and kind of heated, heated rhetoric, but sometimes, something like film just goes in at a really deep level for people. So I think yes. Do I think that's easy? No, and it will ask a lot of you and a real commitment and kind of staying true to that, when something is really alive for you in the artistic process and what you're doing, a lot of care and integrity and all that stuff, attention to detail. So it can be really, really important, or it can be completely irrelevant. It's kind of up to you. And you'll need a lot of help, of course, because you need agents and you need distribution, and you need all that stuff, but in a way, the kernel of it will be up to you.

Plenty of people are making films, as I said, that are pff! What are they doing? I'm not sure. They're distractions, they're irrelevant, and they're very, very expensive, and they're feeding a kind of society of distraction and petty values and violence and all kinds of stuff. But there's the possibility, and it doesn't need, as I said, to be so obvious, hit on the head, what the ethics is. Ethics can come much, much more subtly sometimes and still be equally powerful in an art form.

But it will depend on you. The first piece will depend on you staying really true to what you really care about, and I felt like I heard that care in your question, and I could feel it in my heart. And that's what you have to stay in touch with. Sometimes, just like with the activism, you're dealing with something that doesn't seem directly to have to do with that heart piece: I've got this edit to do of this complicated ... or I'm just dealing with the lighting of this shot. It seems like a million miles away from what my heart cares about, but it's really important. I need to get that lighting right, I need to care, I need to sweat over it, I need to stay up at night, or whatever it is, and get it right, because it's part of the larger picture.

This is the thing: what we really care about needs to stay kind of always there, but it's not always at the forefront, because attention to other details or getting swept up in other demands sometimes is at the forefront. Yeah? But I never lose sight of what's at the basis of it all. You understand? And I really felt I could hear that in what you were saying, and it's really, really beautiful, so I hope that you don't give up on that. I hope that that can come through, and sustain and guide and support what you're doing.

Q3: unsatisfactory integration of Dharma with activism

Rob: [1:10:15] Looks like something's coming on the chat. Shall I do this one now? Yeah? It's from Matthew:

"A possible question: Dharma is a practice technology that is designed primarily, as far as I can tell, to address the suffering of the practitioner and the harm that they spill out into the world. In what ways does the Dharma need to yield or stitch itself to other discourses that are designed around suffering at a societal level? For example, I would choose an effective altruism organization over a Buddhist organization to address certain societal harms, even though I've devoted my life to Buddhism. It feels like we're trying to repurpose a tradition for aims that it's not best suited to achieve. I've been kind of unsatisfied with the ways that Dharma and activism is being integrated. I've often seen it fragment the container and create a sense of multitasking in the practitioners. This leads to less potent practice and often suboptimal activism, and yet the more narrow form of practice where I'm largely fiddling with very subtle strands of suffering feels increasingly decadent, perhaps indefensible."

Thank you. Yeah, really important. I think it's a really important question. I don't think there's a right or wrong there, myself, in terms of yeah, a lot of organizations will be much better suited than Buddhist organizations to address this or that suffering. Absolutely, and yeah, why not plug into them? Other people, I think, will feel more called to begin to look at Buddhism and try and open it up in a way that does better than what you describe there, but that may not be your calling. And if that is going to happen in Buddhism, that's probably not something that's going to happen quickly or easily. It might take some time and all kinds of unpacking and questioning, etc.

As to the sort of multitasking, yeah, I think that's an issue for everyone. There are two issues there. One is: is it, as you say, fiddling with something that feels decadent? Let's come back to that. The other issue is just: if I am trying to do, if you like, two things in my life -- I want to go deep in practice, whatever that means, and I want to be engaged in activism -- then how am I going to balance that, and what's that balance going to look like? Is it even possible? What's the rhythm of that? Do I find a sort of 50/50 or 70/30 balance, and then try and maintain that? If I look at my life, it's more like I have long periods where one dominates and then the other dominates.

A little bit related to what Arjuna asked: for myself, I think, I can honestly say that I've always felt -- even, you know, I've spent long periods of time on retreat, really years on retreat, and there was always a significant portion of my intention for that retreat that it would bear fruit in my capacity to serve and to give and to be available for that. Yes, of course, I was interested in philosophical questions, and liberation, and consciousness opening, and mystical experiences, but I felt that there was always a portion that knew why I was there in terms of the service. So, from that respect, it looks very much like a rhythm where there are long periods of time doing this and long periods of time doing that. That might be some people's style of balancing; other people are sort of half-and-half or whatever it is, and that's a more ongoing way of balance.

As to the "if it's a decadent waste of time," I think this, to me, invites a much larger question to do with, "Why am I actually practising?" And I don't just mean, "Am I practising to end my suffering or other people's suffering?" Not everyone likes this, I know for a fact, but if I dare to open up the reasons why I'm practising, and I begin to say, actually this whole idea, "I'm practising for the end of suffering," to me, it's become a very strange question in the absence of a belief in rebirth. I think I mentioned it in the last seminar, one of the last seminars. It's a bit odd of a sort of thing to try and do: "I'm trying to live my life with a minimum of suffering. That's the point of my life." That's a funny point for your life, I think -- unless of course there's an enormous amount of suffering; then it has to be a priority. Once the suffering is reduced to a certain level, one has to really ask, "Is this really what I'm practising for?" And if it's not, or if that's only a kind of secondary reason, what's the primary reason? Maybe I say, "Oh, it's for the suffering in the world." Okay, maybe. But maybe it's also -- and I can say, and I've said it in many talks and things -- I'm practising for beauty and I'm practising for sacredness. Again, they can feel like completely aesthetic indulgences or whatever, self-centred, but we could turn around and look at contemporary society and the insanities that we kind of perpetuate, and say that it's possible that a significant support for that kind of insanity and injustice is exactly the absence of a care for beauty and sacredness, and an absence of a kind of digested philosophy in society that gives import and place to beauty and sacredness.

So, for example, do we really sense the sacredness of a human being, of our own being and other human beings? Do we really sense the sacredness of the earth and the species, etc.? If we had a practice that really opened that up more and more and more, and that that was part of what we were actually teaching when we taught meditation, and what it opened others to, then that would feed back on this whole question in a very different way, I think. But I think everyone has to come to their own places with these questions, and you might be on a journey with such a question, that it takes you away from practice for a while, and that's what you need to do, and then come back to it with a different kind of intention or a different understanding. I don't think I can decree for anyone else; I don't think it's my place.

So I'm not sure; actually I'm not sure who Matthew is ... there you are Matthew, yeah. Do you want to say anything, or that's good or ...?

Yogi: No, thanks, that was poignant to hear. I appreciate it.

Rob: Okay, thank you. I really do think the Four Noble Truths are stunning in their brilliance, this kind of centralizing of the question of suffering, and how it arises and how we relate to it. Absolutely brilliant innovation of the Buddha. And at the same time, that very piece of the Four Noble Truths can actually be exactly a problem in contemporary Buddhism: that we're locked into a certain way of thinking about what we're doing, and framing what we're doing to ourselves and to others, that actually can end up being increasingly incongruent and not really even honest or make sense. So, it's obviously a very controversial thing to say, but I think that's wrapped up in some of what you're asking.

Yogi: Thank you.

Q4: violence in society -- despair and freezing

Rob: [1:19:45] Nicole's the only one in sunlight; we're all in the dark and you're in the morning sun. [laughs] Okay, here's another one on the chat. So Orit is asking, "How can we deal with the violence in society around us, because it can bring despair and freezing?" I'm assuming you're writing from Israel, as well, Orit, so it's extra difficult there. "I don't know" is my immediate answer. Do you want to say a little bit more? Is there some particular instance or some particular ...? I'm not sure I can say anything without a little bit more. How does that sound? So, I'm not sure. Okay, maybe you don't want to say any more. That's fine.

A couple of things I remember -- two things, indirectly, from Dharma talks that I've heard -- about two Buddhist monks, teachers. One was Maha Ghosananda. I think he was, if not the patriarch of Cambodian Buddhism, certainly a senior monk. But from what I heard of him -- he was in the same monastery as one of my teachers for many years in Thailand, and I think he was outside of Cambodia during the principal reign of Khmer Rouge and the atrocities there, living in this monastery and practising, very intense, hardcore monastery in Thailand. I never met him, but he's apparently a very unconventional character and quite a free spirit.

After he left the monastery, he went back to Cambodia. And I'm sure I'll get some of the details wrong, but he basically led a peace march. Well, I'll say this, because it looks like there's half a question there [in the chat]. Let me finish what I'm saying, and then I'll see if any more of your text comes in, Orit. After he left the monastery, some years in the monastery practising very intensely, he went back to Cambodia and led a peace march. It was actually a very dangerous thing to do. It was a Yatra, really, so it wasn't just a day march; they walked for weeks over vast stretches of Cambodia, through very dangerous regions where the Khmer Rouge was still active, etc. At one point, they were camping out in an old bombed-out school building, and someone threw a grenade into the room they were camping in. Luckily, it was -- what do you call it? -- it didn't go off. It was a dud. But something about that. And they kept chanting the line from the Dhammapada: "Ill-will does not cease through ill-will. Hatred does not cease through hatred. Only through love is there an end to hatred. This is an ancient and eternal law." Something like that, the courage to do that, to take a stand, to put a message out, in a way, to stand up for something else, visibly -- again, at a real edge, in that case, in terms of danger to self, etc. That was one of the pieces of a real beginning of healing in Cambodia. People would come and join them and meet them. Sometimes when there's been incredible violence, it also asks for incredible acts of courage, standing up for peace and broadcasting peace.

Another instance is Thích Nhất Hạnh and the Vietnam War. He was a young monk then, and at risk to his life, and his co-monks', they would go out and just pick up the dead bodies, the murdered bodies in the streets, at great risk to themselves. They were arrested, and some of them were killed for doing that, but it puts a message out, puts a message out, puts a message out with a certain flavour, with an incredible strength to it, and these things have profound effects.

I will tie it into what I said earlier: even if the violence doesn't cease, that someone is doing that, that someone dares to do that, it's a soul thing. That someone is willing to take the risk to do that does something. The violence, the material situation may not change, but one is, the soul is standing up and singing and broadcasting for peace, and that does something, and it does something even to future generations. I'm just remembering this from Dharma talks in the past; it's doing something to my soul just to say it. Maybe it's doing something for you to listen to it. And it does something about "What do we care about? What will we stand up for?" Maybe it won't be that extreme; something happens, but in that time maybe it didn't change the violence right there, right then. So, again, of course we look to the contemporary, material, immediate situation; we want a change in results, but sometimes we have to let the whole thing expand and dimensionalize, and take a stand for the future and also for that which is beyond time.

So now the rest of Orit's message has come in. And we'll need to end with this: "How can we deal with the violence in society around us, because it can bring despair and freeze? Just this weekend our security forces [?] a man arrested during interrogation. It's a bitter man, [?] arrested during interrogation, and he's in critical state in hospital." Yeah, you know, I don't know how it works in Israel -- also, even in England, where we like to think, "Well, if there's enough social outrage, and people saying 'this is not okay,' and writing letters, and showing up, and marching and protesting ..."

Two things. One thing is: that can make a difference. Again, it might not make an immediate difference, but it might make a difference in time as momentum builds. Actually, in time, this thing that is now normal gets to be seen as "This is not acceptable. That's outside of the bounds of what's acceptable," if enough people show up. It's a bit like Greta Thunberg, you know. She was just one schoolgirl, sitting, striking on Fridays outside the Parliament in Stockholm, and now look what happened this last week: millions, millions of children following her. So to do something, and take a stand for something, and ask for something to be different, demand that something be different, it might not happen then, but it might plant a seed for later, and we don't know in the mysterious web of conditions who else is waiting to join us, who else is waiting to add momentum to this initiative or way.

The second piece about it is more psychological, that it's often the case with a lot of these things -- we're talking about heart work and all that, despair, freezing, etc. This is very, very normal -- overwhelm, paralysis, whatever the issue is that we're talking about, and sometimes the taking of action is exactly what liberates us from despair. Even though the action didn't make a difference, it's actually doing something, actually getting behind something. Sometimes it's voicing our anger. Sometimes what's happened in despair and freezing is that there's enormous rage, and it's trapped, and it's kind of gone into a kind of depression and a kind of freeze inside.

I can think of one Buddhist teacher, actually, who suffers from depression. They started to really voice their anger around some ecological and social justice issues, and the depression has lifted, because they're actually letting something come forth, letting the fire come forth -- it's not imploding and paralysing. So sometimes, again, it might not make an immediate difference materially to a situation of injustice, but the very fact of voicing something starts to galvanize something in our soul, in our energy, and that can just lift us out of a despair and paralysis. And that can be a start, and you know, that's actually important. That's really important. But, yeah, I'm assuming you're writing from Israel, Orit, and I just know how difficult and how intractable and crazy the situation there is and can seem. So, yeah, I just feel the difficulty there. I'm not sure what else to add. Hopefully that was a little bit helpful.

We're actually past nine o'clock, guys, so if that's okay, to respect the time, let's just have a bit of silence together to end.

Okay, thank you, everybody. Lovely to see you tonight and to be together in this way.