Transcription
Okay. Time, again, if there are any questions that feel relevant to your practice, or to anything that's been said about the framework, or anything about the detail that we've covered at all. I have maybe just a few things I'd like to throw in as well, but why don't we start with some questions?
Andy, yes?
Q1: balancing opening and enjoying with fine-tuning and probing
Yogi: This was a question, Rob, about the difference, or the similarity and the contrast, between kind of tuning into the nimitta or the qualities of the jhāna -- which feels, to me at least, quite probe-y, and it's almost like -- what do they call it? -- keyhole surgery. It's almost like I'm getting into the quality amid all the other stuff around it. And then, yeah, but also finding the need for something more expansive. So, you know, I've been trying to play with it, almost conceiving it as listening to those qualities, rather than a kind of probing in, a kind of listening, a tuning. I think you said something about trying to hear a noise, faint noise amid lots of other noise. It feels like I need to open more, and yet the very act of fine-tuning feels the opposite of that.
Rob: Yeah, thank you. So are you talking in particular about this space of peacefulness that opened for you?
Yogi: No, but with the first jhāna as well.
Rob: Ah, okay.
Yogi: Probably more with the peacefulness. More what I'm saying now relates to the peacefulness.
Rob: So it does? Yeah, okay. Good. Yeah, correct. [yogi chuckles] It's both, you know? Sometimes the probing is a concentration thing -- literally like, "How much attention can there be in a small amount of area?" But then there's also the probing with the sense of "Can I really get the sense of this?" And then with the opening, as you say -- that thing I said about what would be the best analogy, that thing I said about listening for a sound when there are lots of sounds, and there's just some particular sound I'm listening to, maybe that's a quality. You're actually not scrunching anything up. You're sort of opening more. It's like your antennae are just becoming more sensitive within that openness. So yeah, those two modes will be important, and you can play between them.
What happens sometimes with the peacefulness is -- I'll get into this when we talk more about the peacefulness -- sometimes what happens is there's a very large peacefulness, actually, and it's even larger than the energy body size. Depending on where you are, we want to spend more or less time in that. But at the beginning of the peacefulness, it's probably more energy body-size. But you can still open up the attention wide -- almost like imagine it's a kind of realm. It's a large realm where you're almost listening to the music of the realm. So there's very subtle, exquisite, quiet music there. (This is a metaphor.) That's more open, and the whole thing can feel more open.
Other times, just as the first jhāna, you pick a place where it seems strongest, and you kind of burrow into it, probe into it, yeah? Sometimes, what else can happen -- and it might be after you've just lost it for a bit, or it might be as you're getting into it more -- how would we describe this? -- it's almost like a filament of something, a filament of that peace. So spatially, it's relatively -- you don't know where you're going to find it in the energy body space. But it can tend to be more lower down in the body. It's as if a filament sort of -- I'm trying to think of some kind of organism, some sort of simple organism that has these filament-like things.
Yogi 2: Anemone?
Rob: Anemone? Do they have them? Yeah, that sort of thing. [laughter] It's physical, okay? The other thing to add here -- and we'll get to it more when we talk about the third jhāna more -- is sometimes you're talking about a point in space that you're probing more. Sometimes you're more open. Sometimes you're more tuning into the mental quality of peacefulness. And sometimes you're more tuning into the physical quality of peacefulness. Ideally, we want those two to blend. But what it means at any time in your responsive play and working, it's like, "What do I pick up here?" And if in doubt, pick up the physical one first. That might feel like it's just a filament. It might be located -- "Oh, it's located in my belly button or my kidney," or whatever it is. But more likely, it's just a sort of place in space, a region in space, and there's this kind of filament of that exquisite peacefulness, and that's what you're going with. So there's that as well. Does that make sense for now?
Yogi: Yeah.
Rob: Yeah? Then one more thing I want to add, if it's okay. The other aspect here, or the other metaphor, is really tuning the receiver. So if we think about tuning a radio receiver, we're thinking about the wavelength changing. There are lower wavelengths, sort of lower frequencies, higher frequencies. And really what you're doing in each jhāna is tuning to a particular frequency as much as you're probing a certain point in space. Probing a certain point in space is very helpful, but that's not really what you're doing. You're really tuning to a certain frequency, and if probing a certain point in space or opening up wide space or filament (or whatever) helps you lock in and get a sense of that frequency that's particular to that jhāna or that bandwidth of frequencies, then that's all good. In a way, the primary thing you're doing is focusing on a certain frequency.
As I said, the jhānas themselves are more and more refined. So one of the things I forgot to ask you, when I just asked you a few questions yesterday, is is this state of peacefulness more refined than, let's say, the second and the first jhānas?
Yogi: Yes. Yeah, definitely.
Rob: Yeah, okay, because that's also a signal. If you say, "Well, I'm not sure," then I wouldn't be so sure that you've moved into a deeper state, you know? It might be peaceful, it might be "Yes, it's very nice," but one of the real markers (apart from the other questions I asked you, and maybe some others I can't think of right now) is the shift in refinement. And as you shift in refinement, then you have to get skilled at kind of tuning your receiver and holding there. How that happens might be through the probing, might be through the open and with the antennae up, might be through the sense of filament, etc. But you can play with all of that. Does this address it?
Yogi: Yeah, that's really helpful. One more thing about that. I think the tuning is so helpful. It's completely shifted my thinking about this whole practice, actually, just like this tuning of the dial. But it seems like when there's tuning -- or at least I'm finding it difficult then to also incorporate the enjoyment. I'm tuning, and then I'm, "Oh, no, wait -- actually remember to enjoy it as well." Any recommendations about how to kind of make sure the enjoyment is there with the tuning?
Rob: Well, if we turn it around and say "maximize the enjoyment," and that's the most important thing -- the E on the end of SASSIE -- then you will inevitably find that getting your tuning right is part of maximizing the enjoyment. So it might be just reversing the intentionality. So many people obviously think of jhāna and samādhi as "I'm focusing on one point, and it's a spatial point" -- even if they don't think that consciously, that's what it becomes -- but that's a very limited and limiting way of understanding what's happening. So I would rather go with this frequency thing. But in terms of intention, you can reverse that. Does that make sense?
Yogi: Yes.
Rob: So just, I'm here with this thing. It's like I'm listening to a radio programme, and I really want to enjoy it. "What is that music?", or whatever it is. "I love it!" Then I'm going to want to play with that dial, just because I love it. I'm just following my enjoyment. I can play with the volume. I can shut my door so I can't hear my siblings arguing, or whatever it is, my children, whatever. But that's going to be organically part of me being into it. Do you see what I mean?
Yogi: Yeah, thank you.
Rob: So it might be part of it is just a kind of subtle reordering the hierarchy of intention at any point. Like I said, sometimes I feel that all you need to do is trust this kind of wish to enjoy things to the max, and really let that kind of lead sometimes. But let's see if there's anything else. It might be, related to something I said earlier, the sense of tuning to the refinement might be helped, at different times, by tuning in more to the -- let's say 'physical' in inverted commas, the energy body frequency of that refinement, and sometimes more to the mental. But that shift might also help incorporate, literally incorporate, the enjoyment more. Does that make sense?
Yogi: Yeah.
Rob: Yeah? Okay, good.
Yogi: Thank you.
Rob: Julia, yeah?
Q2: using insight ways of looking as a base practice for jhānas
Yogi: I have a question about using insight ways of looking in jhāna practice. So I've been using them as a base practice, and noticing that there's some anxiety about how indiscriminately or discriminately I'm using them -- like, remembering that part of the instruction with them in emptiness practice is to use them for everything, whether something is pleasant, unpleasant, neutral. But then some worry about using them to look at well-being, for example -- like that that will prevent pīti from fabricating. I guess part of what I've been playing with is just sort of using them indiscriminately for a little while, and then once a sense of well-being starts to open up, using them more discriminately. I found using anattā can help me to open some, relax some of the clinging around the well-being that's coming.
Rob: Yeah, really important question. Thank you. So it's a bit like ... [laughs] What's it a bit like? It's a bit like ... again, I'm sure there's a better analogy than this, but it's a bit like going down a water slide, you know, one of those theme park things. But imagine this water slide, at certain points all the way down, it has turnings off it. So it goes da-da-da, but every once in a while, it has a turning off to the left, a turning off to the right. Have you been on one of those? Yeah? [laughter] You can just kind of veer, if you want, to the right, hopefully without slamming ... [laughter] It's not a great analogy, but you get the idea. It's got padded sides, okay? [laughter] So what that means is, yeah, if you use it indiscriminately at first -- everything that comes up, you said, anattā; let's say we're taking that as an example -- anattā, anattā, whatever comes up.
If I just started with, I think I gave an example, if I've got back pain, and I just did anattā, anattā, anattā, to everything, including the back pain, what would eventually happen was the pain would attenuate. The body sense would start to dissolve. And at some point, pleasure of some kind would come up; let's say it was pīti. So at that point, okay, I'm sliding down this thing, it's great, and I've got a right turn there that I can lean into, which means once the pīti has built enough I can then stop doing the insight practice and just gently but completely switch what I'm doing to "Now I just want to enjoy, enjoy that particular thing," which is the pīti.
If the pīti comes up -- okay, back pain's gone to neutral, and then pīti's come up, and the body's dissolving, and then I say, "Okay, pīti," and I keep doing anattā on pīti, it will go beyond it. Have you found that already? Is that what's happening? Or you're worried that it might happen?
Yogi: Yeah, that's what I'm worried about. I find that I'm not even using it to look at the pīti. As soon as something in the realm of pleasurable comes up, I just stop, and then things shut down a little.
Rob: Yeah, okay. So you need to find a kind of middle ground between being -- you know, as the Buddha says, "Don't snatch at it," okay? So that's really important. But you can also kind of relax. It's like, don't worry, you know? You might overshoot, and then you can come back. It might be -- and this is something I wanted to say to everyone -- that you overshoot, and you find yourself most commonly in, I don't know, some other jhāna, and then either you can work backwards from there (and we can talk about how do you work backwards); or you can hang out there a while, get really used to that, and then work backwards; or that can become your primary playground. So, in a way, don't worry. I think the important thing, first, is to feel like you can do this and get a sense of well-being, which at some point you can kind of steer your body into this thing, and then just enjoy. You make that shift. Exactly where it comes out, I think, first things first: don't worry about it. First get that confidence. That's really important. And then we can map it.
Just for example, let's say it ends up being the fourth jhāna. You say, "Okay, let's learn the fourth jhāna before we learn the first," okay? This is what I said about people who have done different practices. I realize now we have a roomful of people here who have a lot of practice experience, especially insight experience, so things won't necessarily evolve for everyone in the order one, two, three, four. It may, or it may not. But once the pīti has arisen, you know, don't snatch it. You may also -- the pīti has arisen, and I'm doing my anattā on something else, and the pīti is arising. So that's another option. I wouldn't do it so much on the pīti itself, you know? I think I mentioned: if you just stay with those insight ways of looking, they'll take you all the way into the formless realms, and that will probably be just a bit disorienting for right now.
But how does that sound? I'm not giving exact instructions, but I think the most important thing is don't worry too much about it.
Yogi: That's what I wanted to hear.
Rob: [laughs] Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's really important. Anything more with it? No? That's good? Okay, great.
Someone else? Mikael, yeah, please. [18:15]
Q3: maximizing enjoyment to counteract subtle tiredness
Yogi: Thank you. I would like to ask about subtle hindrances. Yeah, hindrances that seem to be somehow coupled with increasing subtlety. I was practising the second jhāna, and doing the same thing as I was doing yesterday, what I mentioned about really absorbing into it, and trying to keep up with the subtlety of attention when the sukha gets really subtle. What I've been noticing again and again, after a certain point, when it gets really subtle, and especially when it starts to lean more towards peacefulness and the third jhāna, I notice that my attention somehow -- there arises a bit of micro-level sloth and torpor, micro-level tiredness when it gets really subtle. So with the peacefulness, more or less, I just get tired somehow, and lose my focus, and it just falls apart. Then I have to reverse, come back. I might get some energy from increasing the sukha or increasing the pīti, and then, again, I would come to the level of very subtle attention, subtle nimitta, and then zoooom -- it sort of falls into tiredness.
Rob: Okay.
Yogi: How could one work with this?
Rob: I'm wondering, as I'm listening, Mikael, if -- I'm wondering; I don't know if this is correct -- but if you could think about two things. One thing is maximizing the enjoyment, as opposed to maximizing the concentration, or even worrying about the subtlety -- although we talked about that yesterday. The other thing, or mixed with that, is: is it possible to keep it longer at a more bubbly level of happiness (which technically is just happiness with more pīti mixed in it)? And let it stay there for much longer with the intention and attitude to really enjoy it more, as opposed to, "Now I'm refining my concentration. Now I'm going deeper in the absorption," etc. Yeah? They're all important factors, but it might be that what's happening -- and again, because of your background and citta habits from practice -- it might be that the absorption and the concentration are deepening faster than the enjoyment is deepening. I find the Buddha's images so accurate in so many ways, his similes. It's like, really drink that water from the spring. Really, really delight in it, you know? Because that's doing something as well. It's giving you energy, but it will do something to the way it then moves deeper, if you like. So it can go deeper through this increasing subtlety, but as you said, sometimes it gets too subtle and we're not able to follow it, and sometimes it's not quite the right thing that needs to happen.
I'm going to talk about the second jhāna tomorrow, but this is actually quite key. If you ask me what's the most significant aspect of the second jhāna, you know, one might be tempted to say, "That's where thought stops, the Buddha says. That's where thought stops," so that's a very significant kind of threshold in terms of deepening concentration. I'm going to come back to that, but I'll say it's not as simple as we might think, what that means. It is important, but I would say in the grand scheme of things what's much more important is the happiness. Bathing in the happiness is doing something to the being. Knowing these different bandwidths of happiness is doing something to the being. Marinating over and over again in that happiness, drinking your fill of happiness, is, in the long-term, in terms of its relation to insight, in terms of the work that it's doing in terms of your capacity to let go, in terms of how it's opening the heart, in terms of what it's teaching you eventually about perception and malleability of perception, emptiness, dependent arising -- that's the key thing.
So we said, what's the work that needs to happen in this moment? That's a sort of very subtle question that's going on for any meditator in ... not every moment, but a lot of moments. And one can say, "Oh, I really need to focus more," "I really need to let it subtlize, drop down with the subtlety and corresponding subtlety of mind," "I want to be absorbed more." These are all valid choices at any time. But it might be that just delighting in the happiness is actually much more significant, and, as I said, it will probably deliver you to a slightly different place, or a very different place, even in terms of the third jhāna, when we get to it -- in way, you can divide the third jhāna into three, and all those levels are important. But going with the happiness more and really, really enjoying it might help steer you a little bit better. Does this make sense?
Yogi: Yes, indeed.
Rob: Yeah? So to do that -- it sounds like you already know, but just to add: I want to keep the happiness relatively gross, okay? It's a little bit the opposite of the instructions I gave you yesterday. You can play between the two. Sometimes just keep the happiness more gross. How do we do that? It's part of this tuning. It's part of just an intention to keep it: I want to keep it in this ballpark, in this bandwidth. But sometimes what you can do -- it sounds like you already are doing it -- is just mix a bit more pīti in if it gets too subtle, or rather, if it gets too calm. If the happiness starts to get too serene, you just mix a bit more pīti in with it. Eventually, all these different bandwidths of the different jhānas become just accessible without having to do any tricks; you just kind of remember back to this and that level within it.
But how does that sound?
Yogi: Yeah, it sounds very good, and you have been describing some of my experiences already. I just wanted to add that I just realized that many times my second jhāna works better when I'm doing it in walking meditation, so it keeps on a grosser level, just because of the movement of the body and coordination.
Rob: Right. That's great. And eventually, what we want is that it's not so influenced by posture -- walking, sitting, standing -- but by intention and this kind of steering. It's all part of the responsiveness and creativity that we're talking about, and you can do it by just a little bit more pīti in the gin and tonic. Yeah?
Yogi: Thank you.
Rob: Good.
Q4: working on different jhānas in parallel; access to jhānas in daily life off retreat; first jhāna less intense/interesting with more practice
Yogi: I have a couple of questions. I'll start with the first. I've been working on the first jhāna for a few days, and then it felt like I reached your mastery definition, and then moved on. But I kind of wonder whether it might have been too fast, because it feels like the access to all these different aspects of mastery is very dependent on the fact that they do it all the time. What I would really like to do is to be able to practise jhānas back home, on a daily practice, just one hour a day or two, and with all the noise of daily life in the background. So I kind of wonder ...
Rob: Yeah, you know, access to jhānas is dependent on a million conditions -- well, not a million; a lot of different conditions. Off retreat, on retreat, there'll be lots of different conditions which allow that each day, each sitting. But one of them is just how familiar it all is, how familiar that pīti is. So a lot of those aspects of mastery are just dependent on being so, so repeatedly soaked in something that it's just easy to summon it, etc. So it might be, yeah, longer.
Yogi: Then how would you know? Just, like, spend more time with what already feels familiar and stable, or ...?
Rob: It might be, but it still might be that you have -- because we talked about you having two or even three playgrounds, so that increasing familiarity, let's say, with the first jhāna might happen in parallel, at the same time -- in other words, on this retreat -- with the second and the third, and you're just developing more and more of them like that, together. In other words, you're still getting familiarity with the first, but you're still developing familiarity with the second as well.
Yogi: I keep practising the first when I'm focusing on the second?
Rob: No, I mean in the course of the day you might move between the first and the second, but give yourself a generous time in the first, and a generous time in the second.
Yogi: Yeah, so I gave myself a generous time in the first, and now I've moved to give myself a generous time with the second. I wonder whether I should still be generous with the first kind of.
Rob: I don't know, you know. I mean, at a certain point -- as maybe I'll say tomorrow -- what will happen is it becomes almost maybe a little difficult to stay in the first. As Andy was saying, the mind so much wants to slide. It's almost got its own agenda and its own wisdom, you know? So it's a tricky question. But there's no reason why you can't just continue for a while with three jhānas. It doesn't have to be, "Right, the next three days I'll spend in one. The next three days after that ..." It's just like, "Today I'll do all three, and tomorrow I'll do all three, and the day after I'll do all three."
As to what happens in your daily life, it's hard to predict. Going back to the Buddha's description of the first jhāna, it's dependent on seclusion, dependent on withdrawal, but not from people and things; it's dependent on withdrawal from entanglement, withdrawal, seclusion from the hindrances. Yeah? So of course, sometimes we're in our daily life, and we're just entangled in stuff -- relational stuff, work stuff, this pressure, that pressure -- and the mind is actually more entangled. And then it's harder to withdraw internally from those pressures. And then health things -- all kinds of things affect what actually happens. So it's actually hard to predict. I don't know, really. My intuitive hunch is: why don't you let yourself just have three for now? And they're happening in parallel, so your day is moving between those three as best you can, maybe roughly equally -- doesn't have to be. This day is a bit more this one; that day is a bit more that one. And just trust in all of that, that it will bear fruit in different ways.
It's probably the case that whatever you can access regularly on a long retreat is further along than what you can access -- for most people -- in their daily life. But there's so much individual variation with things. That's just my intuitive kind of hunch. I don't know. Does that sound okay? Okay. Good.
Yogi: Can I ask one more thing?
Rob: Sure, yeah.
Yogi: With first jhāna, it was very different than the previous jhāna practice, the first jhāna, in the ways you said -- it was less intense and all that. But also it was less wonderful, in a way. The first time I practised it, about a year ago, it was really deeply affecting the whole being, and very impressive, and kind of produced a lot of faith in the Dharma. Now it's as if there are some parts of the psyche that are just not interested in it any more, and they just don't get involved. The body is suffused with pīti, and even the consciousness can be full of the jhāna, but some parts ... I kind of wonder both: is it important, and can I convince them to join again still? Or just say, "Okay, never mind. Now they're in the second and third jhāna"? And also, is it going to happen with each of them?
Rob: It's very normal. I think I mentioned this. It's very normal then to become much less interested in the first jhāna after you've tasted particularly the third. It's very, very normal. And you can go through a period like this. I think one thing is a larger view, that actually I'm really wanting all eight jhānas, you know? It does get less intense over time. It becomes more mellow. And that's partly by the opening to the third jhāna, etc., and the more peaceful realm. So that's all normal, you know?
Again, if you think about more of a direction, rather than "I'm trying to achieve a certain amount of this full involvement." Just think -- here I am now, practising the first jhāna, and maybe it's a little less than I'm practising the second and third jhāna, but when I go there, part of my intention is: can I find this really lovely? Can I actually really get into it? Rather than "Am I, or am I not?", it's like it's more a direction: "Is it possible to get more?", without a sense of "Did I pass or fail that test?" Yeah? It's a subtle difference. It's a direction. Does this make sense?
Yogi: Yeah. I don't think it's like "Did I pass or fail?", it just feels that some areas are just off, kind of -- not interested in this.
Rob: Yeah, but your task is just to give yourself to it more, just to open to it more. It may be that when you've had more to drink from the third jhāna, etc., and maybe deeper jhānas, that your relationship with the first jhāna is then recontextualized, and you see it in a much ... When it first comes, there's nothing else. There's just normal consciousness or papañca, and the first jhāna, and it's completely the most amazing thing. It's a signal to the being that completely other states of consciousness are possible. So oftentimes it really makes a dramatic effect, a dramatic impression. As you go on more, it's more like it just takes its place in a much larger jigsaw puzzle or maṇḍala of the eight jhānas, you know? But you still have a sense of "This is really valuable." So part of your task is to, in that larger context, really, "Can I just really find the enjoyment here?" And you're just trying to work in that direction. But it probably won't be as dramatic, etc., as it was the first time. That's okay, because it's just one part of a much bigger picture. Does that ...?
Yogi: Yeah, I think so. Does the same thing happen to the other jhānas, as well, or is it just the first because of the third?
Rob: Well, in a way, it does. I don't know. I'm not sure. In a way, it might, but in a way, it might be that there's something particular about our relationship with the first jhāna. You'll have to find out. I think there's a way, once you've done more and you have a whole context -- it's almost like having that context takes the pressure off, having it to be a certain way. Does that make sense, what I'm saying about context? It's like you have a larger context, and it just takes the pressure off. I also think, you know, if you spend more time, let's say, in the third, then the quality of the rapture is yummy in a different way. You have to kind of find, "Oh, it's a different taste than I was originally used to," and "Oh, that's actually really nice." So that might be something. Yeah? Okay.
Yogi: Thanks.
Q5: increasing pīti and sukha when samādhi is dry; jhānic equanimity vs non-jhānic equanimity
Yogi: Sometimes the samādhi is quite dry, actually, and I recognize myself quite much when you're talking about people who have been in traditional insight retreats -- it's quite spacious, a lot of equanimity, usually, but quite dry, actually. No big deal, no big pleasures. The energy body is quite light, but not really pleasant. More like neutral. I tried different things, like warming the whole thing up with mettā, and pleasure, trying to find pleasure. But sometimes there is no pleasure. It seems so, at least. So any advice? [38:30]
Rob: Yeah. So this is really important. The movement to equanimity, or the tendency to find oneself in a sort of equanimous space, will be quite common for people who have done a lot of insight practice, etc. The question for our purposes here is whether that equanimity is close to a jhānic equanimity -- and there are different kinds of jhānic equanimity, like very big ones, or smaller ones with the energy body -- or whether it's just equanimity, and it's not really close to a jhāna. Now, what you're describing actually doesn't sound like it's very [jhānic]. It's still a skilful state. It's much better than being [in] papañca or whatever. But it's not really close to a jhānic equanimity. So for some people, actually, what they're describing -- they just work their way into it, and actually it becomes something like the fourth jhāna, let's say, or whatever.
The sense I get from what you're describing is actually it's not that close, and so rather than trying to go in there first and come back and convert that to fourth jhāna, actually, from the beginning, try to think more about pīti and sukha and what will ignite that. So are there ways that pīti and happiness -- what would bring up pīti and happiness? If I asked you that, what would you say? In other words, not letting yourself go to that state -- something else, from the beginning.
Yogi: I mean, in the big picture, I'm going between the first and the second jhāna quite easily today; it's not happening all the time, the dry samādhi thing.
Rob: Okay.
Yogi: But it does. I can just come back to the first -- I mean, I'm a bit snobby about the first jhāna now, I have to say, and I go easily to the second one. It's like I really love to explore the different subtleties of this jhāna, so I really love that one. It became sort of my base.
Rob: The second?
Yogi: Yeah, the second.
Rob: Good. Okay. So it's only going to this equanimity place that's not very jhānic sometimes?
Yogi: Yes.
Rob: Yeah, okay. When it goes there, bring it back. In other words, at the moment, it's not ripe enough. The others are not ripe enough to turn that into a jhānic state at the moment. You need more time in the happiness and the equanimity. As I said -- it's not quite, but a little related to Mikael's question -- then they will deliver you to a different kind of equanimity that's much closer to a jhāna. Yeah? So when it goes there, like I said, relatively speaking, it's a pretty skilful place to hang out, but it doesn't really sound like it's got in it, at the moment, what will allow it to blossom into an actually jhānic equanimity of any kind, really. So when it goes there, fine -- just see: "Oh, it's done that again." And do something to bring back -- if you can summon it just by itself, the happiness or the peacefulness of the third, great; just go back. If you can't, then how am I going to get back, you know? If I can remember it, if I can add a happy thought in, if I can just have a subtle intention, if I need to go back to the base practice, or whatever. But at the moment, I wouldn't hang out in that kind of equanimity too much. Yeah? So that's what you're liking, the second and third, and you just need more time there. It really works on the being gradually, and it prepares something to ripen in its time. So this space that you're in now is more a result of your other practice, rather than the jhāna practice. Does this make sense?
Yogi: Yes:
Rob: Yeah? Okay.
Yogi: Thank you.
Rob: Great.
Is that Lauren? Yes, please.
Q6: how to increase pleasure with tingling/effervescent sensations; inquiring into fear around deepening samādhi
Yogi: I felt your suggestions yesterday were helpful, and I've today been able to work a little with pīti -- well, a lot with pīti. Two questions about it that feel like coming up today, but also coming up in the past when I've worked with pīti. The first one is related to some of these questions around enjoyment. So there will be, sometimes, especially if I'm working with the breath energy, there will be a lot of pleasure, but if I let the breath go, and I bring the attention to what are like sensations of tingling, sort of like an effervescence in the body, and compression/expansion, the energy body feels harmonized, but there's not a lot of pleasure in it. So that's one question. And then the other one is that sometimes when that harmonized energy body, when there's a sensation of that sort of coalescing even more, like a deepening of the samādhi, that there will be, actually pretty frequently, sort of like an immediate -- like my mind will immediately pull back and be like, "Uh-uh! Nope! Not going there." So yeah, those are two questions.
Rob: I'm struggling a little bit today with the medication and things, so the first one, I just want to make sure I understand. The first one is you're working with the breath in the energy body, and pīti arises, but when you switch to the pīti, you find it's not really strong enough to work with? Is that correct?
Yogi: Well, yeah. There's a lot of sensation in the body. There's a lot of, like, tingling, and that feels throughout the whole body, but it's not necessarily pleasurable; it's just kind of odd.
Rob: Okay. So here's an interesting thing. It might be that you need to spend more time working with the breath. You're working with the breath and energy body, right? Yeah, that's your principal practice. Okay. So it might be you just need more time with the breath and energy body to allow that tingling to become clearly pleasant. It might be. Or it might be that actually you turn your attention to the tingling, and you find that whether you perceive it as pleasant or unpleasant -- I think I just threw this out very briefly the other day -- is actually something you can play with. You can just decide to see it as pleasant. It may be that that's the case. So it's a bit like when we talked about excitement. It's a bit like sometimes it's kind of on a fence, and you can flop it either way -- that it's just odd, or it's a bit unpleasant, or it's pleasant. And you can learn to play with the perception that way, and then it's like, "Okay, that's what I'm doing again and again," until it's established in a kind of flow of pleasantness. But I would try both, you know? Both the playing with perception -- just decide to see it as pleasant -- and also let's just stay a little longer, or maybe even a lot longer, with the practice, let the tingling build up, and see if it transforms by itself. Yeah?
And the second one was ...
Yogi: When the samādhi starts to deepen, the mind pulls back from ...
Rob: Pulls back from what though?
Yogi: The felt sensations of the deepening, or the experience of the samādhi deepening.
Rob: Okay, but what might be interesting is to get a little more specific. Is it fear arising at that point? If so, what exactly ...
Yogi: Yeah, it's fear.
Rob: What exactly are you afraid of at that moment? Because samādhi deepening involves a whole bunch of different things happening, a whole bunch of interwoven aspects. So what exactly is it that you're afraid of? Do you have a sense, or ...?
Yogi: That's a good question.
Rob: You might not know now.
Yogi: Yeah.
Rob: So that would be something to take and find out, you know? There are all kinds of things that a meditator can get a little bit afraid of at that point, and the pullback is maybe coming from fear, maybe. So that would be just an inquiry to take into practice, really valuable, potentially. Find out what is it exactly, and then we can kind of target more specifically how we might need to work differently with that. Does that make sense?
Yogi: Yeah. That feels helpful.
Rob: Yeah. Why don't we just say that for now? So give it to you as an inquiry, as something to begin to discern a little bit more clearly.
Yogi: Great. Thanks.
Rob: Okay, good.
[end questions]
Rob: Okay. Let me just say a few things that have come up in interviews or whatever that might be useful to everyone. First thing -- and I didn't mention this in the opening talk, but -- I never said, and I never say, on a retreat, "Don't make eye contact," or that kind of thing. Some of you will be coming in from other retreats and other forms where that's what you're taught, and you're just plugging that in. Like I said, I don't consider it a particularly helpful teaching to give, or kind of guidance to give for a retreat generally. So you can make eye contact with each other, and with coordinators, and with whoever else, if you want to, when you want to. Again, can you be responsive to what you need at any moment? Because actually, the connection with each other is part of the appreciation. It's part of the muditā. It's part of the rich soil of what allows samādhi to deepen, right? Shuffling around slowly, staring at your feet, and being kind of insular like that -- it may not open up much samādhi, because something might get dry in the heart and feel not connected. But you have to see at any moment what you need, because there might be moments where actually you do need to be a bit more inside -- something's going on in your experience or whatever, and you need to kind of, "Yeah, I'm not into that right now." You're not obliged to make eye contact. Eye contact gets very complicated psychologically, or it can on retreat -- what's involved in eye contact, or what it triggers, or what it means, or all this; what are my psychological patterns of sort of avoiding contact, or needing it, or seeking it? We could probably talk for hours on this. I'm certainly not going to. But it's quite complex, you know, psychologically.
But we can say one thing: what do I need right now? And I might need to be a bit more within, and a bit more focused, for whatever reason. Maybe it's an emotional thing. Maybe I'm just working with a certain energy at that point, whatever. But correspondingly, if you make eye contact or smile at someone, and they might be at a moment or at a time when they need to be more insular, and so you might come at them with eye contact and a smile without realizing it, that you're hoping for a smile back, and they just completely blank you. And if you're not careful, that can be kind of, oh, I start to take that personally, and I start to think "They don't like me for some reason," or whatever it is, and the mind just spins with that. So if we're going to let ourselves at times make eye contact and be open, you have to be also kind of quite spacious about, "Am I putting pressure on this situation, or expecting or demanding something?" And really respect other people's space, and their rhythms, and what they need.
So in response to Keren's question, we were talking about when the Buddha -- I've said this before, but I'll say it again -- he hardly ever says, "Dependent on really focusing very hard and very steadily on the tip of the nose, the first jhāna arises." He hardly ever says that. Basically the standard formula is, "Dependent on withdrawal," or "Dependent on seclusion from the hindrances, from entanglement, the practitioner opens and enters into the first jhāna." So it's not that we want to close sense contact. I mean, that's one way of doing it, but you might be drying something else up inside. And I've said, how much the samādhi practice depends on open-heartedness and openness of being.
So this is something, as I said, it can be quite subtle, as usual, quite some responsiveness. It's dependent on open-heartedness, but not getting entangled, rather than just shutting everything down. To me, part of the art and part of the beauty of being on retreat is really sensing deeper levels of connection that we can have with each other, sense of communion in silence, without talking to each other or having someone listen to my story or whatever it is. You just get the sense of each person's being, and the particularities, and the uniqueness of each person's being, and it's just in the vibe. And one's open to that, and one's sort of cherishing, in a way, sensitive to each person's particularities, and enjoying that.
So sometimes we're a bit more like this, and sometimes we're a bit more like this, but being open and feeling connected is actually quite important, I think, and it's part of the art. Some of you have probably never been on a retreat where anyone said to not make eye contact, but for a lot of people in the Theravādan Dharma world, that's very, very common. So hopefully that makes sense.
If I'm going to be open, etc. -- again, we go back to, related to this in a certain way, is I really need to keep my intention steady. My intention is jhāna practice, and that's why we're here. That's what this retreat was set up for. So I can be open, etc., but my intention is steady, and that very steadiness of intention is what allows you to be open. Again, there's a difference between being open and getting entangled, and then getting lost, and my intention has gone somewhere else, versus I can be open partly because I'm just really clear about what my intention is.
So the intention is really for jhāna practice primarily. And then secondly, this intention: what is my playground? This should, hopefully, if it's not clear for you already, it should be getting very, very clear soon. Now, some of you, like I said when we responded to Karen, and I've said in interviews, some of you are going to have multiple playgrounds at once. So it's not necessarily, "Oh, it's the second jhāna," "It's the first." It might be. Some of you might be working on two or three at once, and partly because of how they interact with each other, or what that enables. In other words, for example, the third jhāna might mellow out the first jhāna, or the first jhāna is just too intense and so the second jhāna helps it a little bit. It should be getting clear, and if you feel it's really not clear where your learning edge playground is, let's try and get everyone clear with the three of us, with Sari and Robert, really what your playground is in the next day or two, max, so you really, "Oh, this is my learning edge playground." Yeah? And as I said, for some of you, because of your past experience, it will be a kind of multiple playground. That's completely fine. So this is different than teaching a retreat where people are just starting from the beginning in meditation.
Is anyone who's quite familiar with imaginal practice getting confused about what the difference is between imaginal spaces and jhānic spaces? Or is that okay? So I don't really need to talk about that. Okay, good.
Here's a funny thing. And again, it's like, everyone brings their own unique psychology, etc., to this. So sometimes we're too easily satisfied as human beings. A lot of people, what you're running into is too much pushiness -- so either "I want this to be better," which we've talked about, or "What's next? What's next? What's next? What's the next jhāna? What's the next? I'm ready for the next one!" But sometimes we're a little bit too easily satisfied with something that we can already do, and it's nice, so it's like, "Okay, well, I'll just stay here." It's so individual, and it can change at different times, but this is part of the art of the whole thing, and to check out with a teacher. I learn a lot about my life psychology here, but you see it in the microcosm of something like jhāna practice. Jhāna practice reveals a lot because it's inherently kind of goal-oriented, and so we learn so much about our relationship with goals and all that.
[57:57] Some of you, or some of you in some moments, will be being too pushy, and probably everyone has encountered that. But some of you will be a little too easily satisfied with where you are or where you've been for a while. Again, that's something you might want to bring to interviews and explore a little bit. The interviews, they're quite regular, aren't they? They're every other day for people. And really, you know, I don't know if you've been feeling this, but there's no pressure on the interviews. Don't feel like you have to come in and say something super insightful or interesting, or have a big problem, or a really great question. I mean, hopefully you will have all of those things, but you don't have to. Sometimes what happens in the course of a long retreat with jhānas is the practice itself is just kind of plateauing for a while. It's like something's gestating, and then at a certain point it will just take a quantum leap. So if that's the case at any point, "Well, I'm going into this interview saying pretty much the same thing I said in the last interview, or reporting the same thing," no problem. Just report it. Maybe the interview's a lot shorter, you know? I'm just checking how you're doing. Maybe the teacher will ask you a couple of things, or find something that you can work with, but maybe it's just shorter. So I don't know if it is arising, but if you feel any sense of pressure for the interviews, you don't have to.
Something I've said before, but I think it really bears repeating, maybe in just slightly different words: pīti, if we're talking about pīti, will have a huge range of how strong it is, how intense it feels. And in a way, it really doesn't matter. It's got to be strong enough to work with, strong enough to get into. But sometimes it can feel relatively weak, and especially, like I said, maybe that's compared to the first few times I experienced it or whatever. In a way, what we want is to be okay with that whole range -- okay when it's really very intense: can I bear that? Can I open to it? Can I actually find that enjoyable? Can I really come into a relationship with it where that's fruitful rather than almost like cringing in relationship to it, or holding back, or contracting (which would be very normal for most people)?
But also on the other side, when it's kind of relatively weak -- it's fine; it's okay; it's definitely pleasant, but it's definitely nothing to write home about -- can I still get into that? Can I learn how to work with that relatively unremarkable pīti, and still really get into it, and give myself wholeheartedly, and see what's possible there? It may not become more intense. I mean, it may become more intense, but as we said with the SASSIE, the I is not so important. What's important, though, is here is this -- in this sitting, or this walking, whatever it is -- this pīti that's not so intense; it's still pīti. Can I stay interested in it? Can I work with it? Maybe what has to happen is I have to actually increase the intensity of my attention. Not the intensity of the pīti, but the intensity of my attention. And again, it's like, do I know how to do that? Do I actually get a sense of what it feels like to have a very intense attention, and a less intense attention, and a kind of medium attention? Do I recognize what that feels like? Can I turn the dial on that, or the fader switch? Can I have an intense attention without getting a headache? Or is it, with this slightly weaker pīti, that I actually need to go into the opening more, and that's what needs to happen? So can I open intensely? We tend to think of intensity as a kind of probing. What would it be to really, really intensely -- that's why I use words like 'surrender' and 'abandon oneself.' So it might be that that needs to get more intense. It's not the pīti, necessarily, that needs to get more intense, but I need to find, of all the aspects of attention, all the different dials there, all the different faders there, what's the maximal setting for each one. That's a way too technical analogy, but I'm playing with all these different aspects of attention, playing with all the possibilities there to really make this work even though the pīti itself is not very remarkable. So that in itself is a really useful skill. It's part of the art.
I just want to throw out two things which I hardly mentioned, just in case people who haven't encountered them before are encountering them and are a little fazed by them. One is -- did I mention the nāda sound? Or I just mentioned it, but I didn't really ...? So it's pretty common for some people in meditation, or common at certain stretches of their meditation life, when the samādhi deepens in some degree (it might be even not jhānic), to hear a kind of ringing in the ears, a kind of buzzing or that sort of thing. It's very normal, okay? Some people take that as a meditation object, and there are a couple of different ways you can work with it as a meditation object. You can work with it as a concentration object. You can work with it in a way that is a kind of platform in insight. But really what I wanted to just say right now is just that it's normal, and nothing weird is going on if you hear a ringing in your ears that sounds like it's really loud, even, sometimes. You don't have to take it as an object, and if you're fine with whatever practice you're doing, leave it. Just let it be there. It's just something that's going on. It might come and go. It's not a big deal. It doesn't mean there's something wrong with your brain or anything like that at all.
The second thing that can happen -- it happens a lot with insight meditation, and certainly if you're doing these actual insight ways of looking that Julia mentioned and I mentioned the other day, but it will also happen with samādhi practice -- is that sometimes, after a practice, you look around you, or you're walking around, and it's almost like everything feels like ... like you're looking at a wall, and it just feels like it's made of paper, or it's see-through, or it's lost its solidity. Very, very normal, okay? Not a problem at all. You're not going crazy. It's completely normal. What's going on there is actually really interesting, and it's something I'll come back to when we really start to talk about insight and jhāna more. But I'm saying both these things about the sound and the visual perception of sort of loss of solidity or that sort of thing just to reassure, in case these things are opening up and you're not used to them.
I think that's it. Yeah, I think that's it.
[Transcriber's note: this was followed by some practical retreat information, omitted in this transcript.]
