Q & A

Okay, so we have a period today for some questions, if there are any. I've got a couple -- I think at least two -- written, and maybe just three little things I wanted to throw out. I will get to all these things, including the written questions, but maybe to start with an oral one, if there is one.

Q1: practising with nāda (ringing/buzzing sound)

Yogi: Correct me if I'm wrong. I don't recall you actually describing the way one might practise with the ringing in the ears as a concentration practice. Did you, or could you?

Rob: I can. I didn't. Deliberately I didn't. The reason I deliberately didn't is because the more you pay attention to it, the more prominent it becomes, and the more sort of sustained it becomes, and it's possible, further on down the line, that you decide that you don't want it to be prominent and sustained. So I feel a little tentative about giving that as an instruction. I guess there are three ways you could relate to it -- actually, four ways.

(1) One is: this is actually tinnitus. And I don't know, is there a medical solution for tinnitus? What's that? Ignoring it? Which is what I was going to say -- not so much ignoring it as not getting into a fight with it. One option is, in other words, that either whether it's tinnitus or it's just the ringing in the ears, the sound that comes up as the mind gets still and energized for some people, and you decide, "This isn't something I'm particularly interested in. I don't really want to work with it meditatively" -- I know that's not what you're asking; I just want to give a teaching -- if that's the case, then the best attitude to it is I'm not really paying it attention, and the most important thing is not to get into an aversive relationship with it. Okay? So what I'm really watching is my aversion in relationship to it. It's just some noise happening. It doesn't mean anything about me.

I'll get to this more when we talk about emptiness and dependent arising: if I get into an aversive relationship with it, I make it unpleasant. I will perceive that sound as unpleasant. Then that unpleasantness triggers more aversion if I'm not careful, and it's perceived as more unpleasant, and the whole thing cycles around, just because of dependent arising, because there was even just a little bit of aversion at the beginning that I wasn't taking care of. Do you understand that loop? Okay. It happens with any object of perception: there it is, and I'm in an aversive relationship (even a subtly aversive relationship) to it. It cannot help but colour and shape and form the object of perception -- in this case, the internal sound -- and it colours and shapes and forms it negatively. It becomes more unpleasant. Then, usually, again, without mindfulness, without care, without skilful relationship in the moment, what's more unpleasant just triggers more aversion, and the whole thing loops around. That can become, eventually, as maddening as it is for people who really don't like their tinnitus, you know?

So whether it's organic in origin -- let's say that it's actually tinnitus, if there is such a thing -- or whether it's this thing, if I decide that I'm not really picking it up as an object, then I really need to just watch that aversion. So that's one thing, if I'm not really interested in it.

(2) If I am really interested in it, again, with the caution -- the reason I didn't put it out was because one might change one's mind. I explored it for a while; it doesn't come up that much any more. In other words, enough time has gone by. It got prominent, you know, the whole thing, but enough time went by that I just wasn't that interested in it. I didn't get aversive, and the whole thing died down. But if one did decide, "Okay, I'm at least willing to experiment with it," then basically, there are, broadly speaking, two ways, okay?

(2.1) One is with using it as a kind of concentration object. That would be like the base practice. That would be the primary thing that you're paying attention to, but it's a sound. So when you get distracted, that's what you return to. And as with if we were working with the breath here, again, it's like, can I get really intimate with it? Can I really listen in a very fine way? Do I need to play with a delicacy of my listening, the intensity of my listening? All that stuff. It's the same kind of thing.

What often happens for people who choose that as an object is that, as they listen more carefully -- or it might be obvious from the beginning -- is that it begins to reveal that it's actually not so much a spectrum as a collection of frequencies. In other words, there's a lower one, there's a higher one, there's stuff in the middle, and maybe they're slightly different, and you can kind of begin to discern. It's almost like listening under a magnifying glass, so to speak. Everything's individual, but it often is the case that listening to the higher-pitched one will bring more energy into the being. Everyone's individual, but find the highest pitch in this kind of chord, if you like, that's what you listen to, and that brings more energy. It is, if you like, a more refined object. So we were talking about the refinement with the jhānas and that kind of business -- it's similar to that. It's a more refined object, partly because, in a way, a higher-pitched sound, in terms of physics, is a more refined object.

What can then happen, if then you're tuning to that -- the higher pitch, the higher pitch, the higher pitch, and probably, again, the background of the whole thing, with the body. You really want to include the body. It's a bit like the instructions we gave to Julian: if I paid attention to my upper lip here with the breath, I still want the body in the background. Eventually what will happen with the sound or with the body is the body just gets integrated into, in this case, the listening, and one is listening with the body. Some people can start that already because they're familiar with listening with the body, but at some point, just by including the body in the background awareness (this sound is the foreground, the higher pitch is foreground), it starts to integrate, and the connection between that and pīti in the whole energy body, etc., can go.

And what happens, this higher pitch that I've been paying attention to, it may be that after a little while, that starts to kind of split into a chord. It was perceived as one pitch, and then it becomes a chord, and again, you can go to the highest one. So that's a method, and for some people, it's really, really helpful for their samādhi. But again, not to get confused what the primary nimitta is once the jhānic factors arise, yeah? So it might be that some people listen to that, and they listen to that, and that's the object, and they're really, really steady, and very focused, and very concentrated, but they're not getting so much into the pīti or the sukha or the whatever. So again, in this way of teaching that we're exploring on this retreat, once the pīti or sukha or whatever it is comes up, and it's constant enough, it's strong enough to work with, definitely pleasant, then that becomes the primary. Then the sound, it's a bit like the breath in the energy body: is there a way that it helps it? Probably is, because energy body, in energetic terms -- which, remember, is completely an illusion; it's a relative truth -- but in energetic terms, in that language, energy body, we're talking about vibrations. When I say "pay attention to the energy body," I say "frequencies," "vibration," "tone" -- this is all musical language. A tone is a note. A frequency, a vibration -- that's all music, you know? So it could be that the energy body and the sound are just kind of mutually vibrating like that, and that's what allows the whole thing to grow in the samādhi direction, if that's what I want.

(2.2) There's another way of using it which is more -- some people use it as a kind of insight practice. So then it becomes less an object of concentration in itself, and more a kind of backdrop that relativizes the arising and passing of other phenomena. In other words, this sound feels like it's going on forever, and it's just there, even though -- it's a bit like when I talked about that vastness of awareness; in fact, they're very parallel practices. So this sound, people who really get into it give it a kind of cosmic significance, like it's the primal, primordial sound of the universe or whatever. The concepts and views wrapped up in that are that it's eternal: it eternally pervades the whole universe forever, maybe even before the beginning, before the end of the universe. It's just there. My ability to hear it at any time might come and go. That's actually really important. Is it an ultimate truth? I would say absolutely not. But it can be a really important stepping-stone in terms of insight. So if I have this sense of it as constant, eternal -- eternal not in the transcending time sense, but as in lasting forever -- and I have that sense of it, then anything else that comes up, any other sounds, the birds, the heating noise, the voice, any other sensations, the pain in the back, the whatever-it-is, tastes, smells, touches, thoughts, all of that is kind of given a constant backdrop with which to kind of offset its relative impermanence, and the fact that it's just coming and going, and this thing just stays. Does this make sense?

So that's very similar to what people get into with the vastness of awareness. And what that does, because you've got something that's constant, and I haven't got the view this is an irritating tinnitus sound; I've got the view this is something mystically lasting forever, etc., and it pervades the whole universe, so it's less a thing that you're doing that to, more a backdrop, and that enables one -- if it's working well -- to let go in relation to the phenomena (sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, and thoughts) that arise impermanently (arise, pass, arise, pass) against the backdrop of that forever-lasting ... Does that make sense? So that would be a way of using it as an insight practice. Some people, either way can be really, really powerful. The reason I didn't was because of what I said -- because some people end up just really getting irritated by it, and then kind of feel a little bit stuck with it, and don't realize that then you actually have to work with the aversion to unstick yourself if you change your mind. But yeah, for a lot of people, very, very profound. The question I would still have -- let's say for an insight meditator doing it that second way that I described -- is "Great. And then how are you going to transcend that? How are you going to go beyond it?"

Yogi: Are you asking me?

Rob: No, I'm asking anyone who does that for a long time and gets a lot of fruit out of it. And 'a long time' means probably months. I know people who have been doing that for decades. But I don't know anyone who's gone beyond it. It's not to say you can't; it's just the how becomes a real question. In other words, I might have set up my whole view of practice and goal -- through that practice, it comes with sort of views that are conscious and semi-conscious, and through all that, I might have set up my idea of what practice is and what the goal of practice is in a way that actually doesn't permit me to go beyond it. So it's just a question: how? I'm not saying it's impossible. Of course it's not impossible. But it would take a whole kind of reworking. In that system, there's nothing that's kind of integrated into that view that you can rely on that, in time, will go beyond that. It's rather you'd have to actually then re-examine the whole view and do something really quite different probably, whereas there are other ways of insight practice that I would like to talk about on this retreat that have within them, actually, you just keep doing the same thing -- not the same practice, but the same principle -- and it just goes beyond wherever you are, beyond, beyond, beyond. It'll eat up everything. But that's a whole other subject. So different possibilities, yeah? Okay, good.

Is that Nic? Yeah.

Q2: possible different kinds of subtlety and intensity; inquiring how to get more into pleasant sensation rather than inquiring about whether it's blocked

Yogi: An exploration has kind of opened up in the last couple of days around the spectrum of subtlety to intensity of experience -- so experience of the energy body, and in the energy body, and of the nimittas. I think I feel like I've done most of that work within a soulmaking context. I don't know -- within that context, I feel really confident about working with subtle energy body experiences, especially when there's image present as well, but I kind of realized that I was finding here that because there's this map, and there's more universal things that we're after, and kind of trying to tap into, or these realms that we're trying to tap into and experience, I began to get really confused about what is subtle and what's intense, and whether subtlety actually has some near enemies, because I had two really strong pīti experiences two sits, and then I had one which it was much, much less intense -- it was much gentler and softer. And I wasn't sure. There was some doubt around, "Is this subtle pīti? Or is it blocked? Or is it hindered in some way?" And then you gave the image of the glowing ember, and fanning that a little bit to get the flames going. It seems obvious that the ember is the subtle thing and the flames are the intense thing, but you can also have a really intense feeling of a glowing ember and subtle feeling of flames. So I've just been thinking a lot about it. I might be making too much of it, but it seems like quite an important thing to feel into and to tune into a bit more, to be more confident. Do you need to experience a quality really intensely before you can know it in its subtle aspects, for example? That's one question.

Rob: Okay, yeah. So let me give a response and see if it addresses what you're asking, Nic. I think the problem is with the word 'subtlety,' which I've been conscious of in myself when I use it, that actually it's -- what is it when a word has at least three meanings? Not ambiguous, but ... triguous? Anyway, it's confusing, potentially. So we can talk about the intensity of the pīti, how strong it feels, and that's an element of SASSIE, right? The I. And that, I said, doesn't matter. It only matters that it's definitely pleasant, okay? Over the course of [practice], if you really get into jhāna practice, you'll probably experience pīti over that whole range. And basically the point of the SASSIE is, the I, I don't need to worry about that too much. As long as it's relatively pleasant, I don't need to worry about it. If it's so pleasant that actually I'm really struggling with opening to that, and it's kind of almost uncomfortably pleasant, then I may need to work in different ways with that. But generally speaking, I don't need to worry.

Initially with jhāna practice, you'll notice -- depending on whether you've gone via the ember in the energy body and fanning it, or via the nostrils -- generally you'll just notice there's a variation from formal session to formal session of the strength of the pīti, of the intensity of the pīti, and it doesn't matter. Over much more time, you'll realize that once you've got second, third jhāna, fourth jhāna, all that, you'll realize that there has been -- gradually, in a not very uniformly linear way -- a kind of lessening of the intensity of the pīti over time. That's just in terms of the strength of it.

But then we can also talk about subtlety and intensity of attention. I would even separate: do those even mean the same thing? In other words, what is it to just -- this is quite a hard thing to communicate if one hasn't really experienced it -- what is it to turn up the intensity of the attention on something? So as you say, you could have a very subtle object, but you're paying attention to it very intensely, absolutely, and maybe in different ways, you know? Does that make sense?

And then a third word that gets mixed in here is 'refinement.' As we go through the jhānas, what happens is, as I said, each jhāna is more refined than the other. So subtlety is not quite the same thing as refinement; subtlety of attention certainly isn't. It's almost like there are at least three different words that could get confused there. Does this ...? Subtlety, intensity, and refinement. And then you've got of the attention and of the perceived object, you know? So we could be talking about quite a few different things here. Are we talking about the attention? Are we talking about the nimitta? And are we talking about its subtlety, its refinement, or its intensity, or what? Yeah? Maybe in some circumstances 'subtlety' and 'intensity' will just be flips of each other. But is this not quite hitting the nail on the head?

Yogi: [inaudible]

Rob: Well, again, if you come back -- so often, okay, come back to the big picture: what am I actually trying to do here? In soulmaking practice, we're not necessarily after more intensity of anything particularly. But what we are after is the development of sensitivity. And so part of really opening to an image and working well with it might be just "Do I have right now the art and skill and capacity to notice, do I have enough sensitivity to notice the different soul-resonances and energetic resonances, etc., that are going on?" So all you're really doing, it's part of "Can I tune to it?" And it's just "What's there, and what does it need, and what can I notice?" With the samādhi practice, it's more "What does it need in order to get more into this, and for it to either feel better, or for me to just feel like I'm really, really into it now?" You understand? So that's why, for example, the I in SASSIE, the intensity, it doesn't actually matter. What matters is how I'm relating to it. But if in my mind I know where I'm going, what I want is to really get into an experience that's pleasant, or to help it move to the next level -- but that would only be at certain times, once it's really matured and it's ready to ripen. So just as a general thing, if you can get used to this sort of big picture: where am I going in this practice? Do you understand what I'm saying? That helps guide me in the moment, at times when you won't have a teacher to ask. Think about where is this practice going, and the larger hierarchy view informs the middle hierarchy, which informs this moment what I emphasize in my attention, what I attune to, what I amplify through my attunement, etc. Does that make sense?

Yogi: So for a beginner -- I'm just getting into working with the pīti -- rather than sort of worrying about "Is this subtle pīti, or is it hindered, or is it blocked in some way?", if I ask the question, "How do I make this feel better? How do I increase the well-being?", going in that way rather than worrying about whether this is subtle or intense or ...

Rob: Yeah, absolutely. Subtle and intense doesn't matter. It's just "Is it definitely pleasant?" And know that it will move across a range. "Is it blocked or hindered?" is a different question. It's not like, "Oh, it's not so strong in this session," and then I start to wonder, "Am I blocking or hindering it?" No. If it's blocked or hindered, you will feel that as a block -- it will feel uncomfortable. It will feel like it's stuck somewhere, or it's the pain in the body, or something like that. So I wouldn't worry about that. But what you can always ask is "Can I get into it more? Can I enjoy it more?", which doesn't equate to "Can I make it stronger?"

"Can I get into it more? Can I enjoy it more?" might and should include playing with the intensity of the attention, the delicacy of the attention, different modes of attention -- am I opening? Am I going into it? Am I wrapping myself in it? All this stuff. But again, as a general principle, it's really helpful to think backwards. This is oftentimes what's so missing in people's Dharma practice, or it's common for it to be missing, is that one isn't really clear about what the kind of aim is of this or that practice, and then how everything acts to support that aim. We end up actually being quite unsure at any moment what to do, or, unfortunately, because we've heard so-and-so say that, and so-and-so say that, we end up emphasizing something that doesn't fit into or is a confusing paradigm or whatever. Does that make sense?

Yogi: Yeah, thank you.

Rob: So yeah, it's really important. Good.

Q3: connecting nāda to a body part, foot/heel lifting up off the ground as samādhi increases

Rob: I've got a couple of written ones.

Today I had a very strange meditation experience. I was doing formal sitting practice outdoors on a chair under my favourite tree. [Lovely.] I was aiming at exploring the rooms close to the first and second jhāna. I had played with the nāda sound [that's that sound that Jason was just talking about] / current, and played with connecting it, connecting the sound and my left foot. I had moved on to mettā as a springboard, and felt the warmth and happiness and well-being of giving mettā. In the scene, there was also the nāda and light.

So even though she was doing mettā, there was still the sound, and this light, these secondary nimittas. Going back to the nāda sound, it can arise for people as a kind of secondary nimitta, an indication that their practice is deepening in terms of samādhi.

I was working and playing with expanding, and enjoying that too. Then I sensed as though something was moving under my right foot. I had heavy trekking boots on. This felt very surprising and strange, and caught my attention. After a short while, about five or ten seconds (it seemed -- I'm not sure), that subsided, and instead I felt something trying to push my left foot up from the ground as if it were in the way. I experienced this as very strange. First I wondered if the hard wind might be moving a branch on which maybe my foot was resting. The sensation continued, and I opened my eyes and saw my left foot almost rhythmically in pace with the sensation from my foot/sole. I lifted my foot and boot, but there was nothing: no branch that could have been moved by the wind, no animal, no hole in the ground. Only small, small pieces of branches, leaves, and soil and mud. I perceived this as very strange.

I put my foot back and went back to my intended practice, meditating in the playground of foothills of the first jhāna. To my surprise, the sensation of something trying to lift my left boot reappeared soon. This was scary. Was an animal trying to break into my boot or wanting to get it out of its way? Again I opened my eyes, lifted my boot, and looked carefully. I even poked around with a stick. Nothing. I'm really puzzled. Can you help me understand what might have been going on? I would really appreciate that.

Okey-doke. So I don't think this is that common. Well, I can say that I experience something like that. In certain meditative states -- maybe less in the deeper jhānas, but certainly around the first, that sort of territory, as you described, the rooms, the foothills around that -- the energy, the pīti is opening the body, and one of the ways it opens the body for me is my heels come off the ground. It's really not a big deal. They just slowly come up off the ground. And I mentioned this thing about the head tilting back. I don't know, does anyone else ...? Has anyone else ...? No? Okay, so maybe it's just me and you, but I'm okay with that. It doesn't bother me at all. I'm experiencing it; I'm pretty sure it's just a movement, an expansion of the pīti actually expanding the physical body, in much the same way that the head tilting slightly back is. It disappears as the samādhi gets deeper, beyond the first jhāna territory. And even in the first jhāna, it tends to sort of quieten down, I think.

So that's how I perceive it. I guess it could move the other way. The feet could go to the side, or the toes go up or whatever. But it's really just an energetic phenomenon. It's not at all weird. Nothing at all to worry about. I suppose, probably, if I look back, very, very low down the list of my, "Oh, maybe I should have done something slightly differently," "Maybe I should have tried to keep more still." But it's so not an issue for me. How does that sound? Yeah?

Just a couple of other things. This is for everyone. When you've got a lot of secondary nimittas and things going on, again, really make sure what the primary one is, yeah? And then these are all secondary. And to the degree that I can mix them in, that it really feels like they're supportive rather than kind of pulling the attention in different directions, that's good. Yeah, you know, we can do all kinds of things with our sense of body anatomy. You started with connecting the nāda sound, "connecting it with my left foot." Yeah, you can do all kinds of things like that. Again, the movement of where we're going is such that, at some point in the jhānas, for some people quite early on, the whole body shape kind of dissolves from consciousness. I guess, in a way, we want to make sure that we're not perpetuating that beyond where it's useful, you know? Does that make sense? Yeah? So these are just things to check. But yeah, I think really nothing to worry about, and very normal. Yeah? Good.

Q4: working with feelings of guilt and pain around experiencing pīti and happiness while others in the world are suffering

Rob: Okay, I've got another note here, if there's nothing else right now.

Working with pleasure, joy, love, etc., brings up a lot of guilt, and a little sadness, and even pain. Am I allowed to be happy and live my life joyfully if someone is suffering? Does my happiness cause suffering in someone else? I can sense the pīti, the joy, etc., underneath something that feels like holding back and guilt. I want the joy and happiness so badly, but I also feel very sad that other people suffer, and maybe even suffer because of me, and don't allow themselves to live their life joyfully, or don't have the conditions to do so (race, social status, etc.). I feel I need to suffer with them to show some allegiance and solidarity. Focusing on that guilt and sadness, etc., takes me away from the pīti again, a habit that is there for too long now. Not focusing on it seems as no one would hold that pain, and it feels as if the pain wants to be held.

Okay. Yeah. So this is quite important. It's actually quite common, is partly what I wanted to say. So this kind of thing I have heard a lot, or relatively quite a lot, from students over the years. "Does my happiness cause suffering in someone else?" Well, it might, but it might in two ways. Obviously if you talk unkindly to someone, then -- well, that's not your happiness. Your happiness in jhāna doesn't cause suffering to someone else. They might, and maybe people experience, "I want to go away on retreat for this long, and my family or friends are saying, 'I'll really miss you,' 'It'll be difficult without you,'" etc. Hard, tricky. Technically speaking, it doesn't cause the suffering, that alone. Or if I say, "I really want to do this. X or Y is really important to me. I need to devote myself to this project, and therefore I can't have time for this or that person right now," does that decision cause their suffering? Or, if they're suffering over it, is their suffering then dependent on a lot of conditions? Partly what their psychological propensity is, what their background is, what the agreement in our relationship is, other conditions, the way they're relating to their suffering.

This is quite important, this word, 'cause.' Sometimes it's much more helpful to think about the coming together of conditions that gives rise to suffering, or the coming together of conditions that gives rise to happiness or whatever. So what happens is very easily a person says, "You made me suffer." Now, in some instances, that's actually a really healthy view. If I rob someone, or, as I said, am inappropriately angry at them or whatever, or punch them or whatever, yeah, definitely, we can think very helpfully about a one-to-one causal relationship. But in many situations, what's actually happening is a person is suffering, and that suffering that they're experiencing in this moment has all kinds of conditions, often over many years of what's been cultivated as psychological habit, or what's been cultivated in their history, or in the agreements of your relationship, etc., or a non-clarity about relationships, or the absence of a conversation about needs and supporting each other to have different needs, etc. So I don't know exactly what the example is here, but I would caution about that, about one's own happiness causing suffering.

And yes, if I choose X, there are certain things in life that, if I choose them, it effectively means I cannot choose Y, or I have to postpone Y. And we really, really need to understand this. Or if we amplify the whole question to an ethical question, you know -- this thing about flying, a lot of people have heard me go on and on and on about that we fly too easily these days, and with the carbon emissions. But maybe someone is making an ethical choice between X and Y, and they're weighing up, or trying to weigh up for themselves: what's the most ethical, virtuous thing to do? But in making this choice, I can't do this. So either I go and whatever it is -- my grandmother is dying, and she needs a nurse, and whatever, and I've got the time, and I'm happy, and we have a good relationship. I go. If I go, I can't not fly. If I don't fly, I can't go.

There are a million examples, every day little examples and, through our life, lots of big examples. You cannot avoid, we cannot, as human beings, avoid those kinds of choices, and with the best conscience, and with the best kind of sensitivity and listening that we can muster, we have to choose. But we will always be choosing, in some ways, what we could call a moral shortcoming, an ethical shortcoming, and some kind of suffering may come out of that. So this is just part of what it means to be a human being, and we have to recognize this, acknowledge it, open to it, and deal with it. Someone, somewhere is going to get disappointed at some point with our choices. The question is, what's navigating me, and how am I relating to that? So that's a whole question.

But there's a lot in this note, you know. Let's say I devote my life to serving others, to alleviating suffering in the world. I still have to make particular choices within that. I cannot possibly address the whole of the suffering in the whole world. So maybe I work in human rights, or maybe I work in racial injustice -- whatever it is. In doing that, again, in order to give my energy to that, I'm neglecting something else. And let's say I choose one. But I have to be conscious of this: I cannot possibly help everyone's suffering at the same time.

But even then, let's say I've chosen something. I'm aware of this, "Okay, I have to choose, and that's at the cost of something else, of not doing something else." I give all my dedication. It's my job, whatever, but even my job, half of my money I give back into that organization. I just live on the bare minimum. I'm still going to need to sleep and eat and rest, get nourished. In a way, what we're doing with jhāna practice particularly is really taking the time, on a retreat like this, to develop really deep sources of rest and nourishment so that -- and I've mentioned this a few times, but not so sort of directly -- we can move out into the world, if we want to, and be that much more resourced. One can stay with this service work in hard conditions, in conditions that are not in themselves very supportive or very nourishing, that might be quite difficult. One can stay steady with the flack and the eight worldly conditions -- praise/blame, etc. -- that are there. One can keep doing that. One has those resources accessible to one. So if you didn't, and you said, "I'm going to try and help. I'm going to go somewhere and help in a refugee camp" or whatever, and I decide to do it without sleeping and eating, how sustainable is it going to be?

So it's similar to that. If we want to really kind of make our capacity and the possibility of our service very stable, very far-reaching, it's like, we can stay steady. We have the capacity. We can keep showing up. We have the energy. We have the flexibility. We have the bigness of heart that can be close to really difficult dukkha. Something in the heart has grown large, and partly it grows large through jhāna practice (partly). So all that. There's still that kind of question, to kind of, again, understand: what are we doing? What's the context of what we're doing here?

Again, I don't know how often, but it is really quite common that I have heard this kind of question quite a lot over the years. Oftentimes, it's just asking for a more thorough and careful, loving psychological inquiry into what's going on, what's going on there for oneself, because it might be we've been educated in a certain way to believe certain things. As I said, around the first and second jhāna, a lot of this comes up: is it okay to experience this much pleasure? But also, just this -- is it okay to feel this happy when other people are not? This is very, very common. And yeah, there might be all kinds of views that have been implanted in there socially, culturally, from the family, whatever.

Just in terms of the last thing in the note, I think it's quite important. So there's already a recognition in this note: "Focusing on that guilt and sadness, etc., takes me away from the pīti again." The person who has written this has written, "It's a habit that's been there for too long now." So there's already a recognition, "Oh, there's something else going on here that needs some investigation."

"Not focusing on the sadness and the suffering in the world seems as if no one would hold that pain, and it feels as if the pain wants to be held." So again, if we're talking about world suffering, or social injustice, I think -- I don't know -- I think we need to be clear that I'm not the only person in the world caring for this issue. And sometimes the mind just gets squeezed into sort of semi-conscious beliefs that obviously don't make sense. There are other people working on this. I can afford to take a rest for a few weeks to do a retreat, or I can afford to sit for half an hour in the morning or two hours a day, whatever. It's not really going to mean that that suffering is not attended to or goes unheld in the world. If, for instance, there's one person that I know in my life, and it really seems like they're isolated, and they have no one but me to have a sense of holding with, I think that needs a larger conversation, and a larger look at the situation, and their situation, and our relationship, etc., and what can be brought in there, because that's obviously not that helpful for them, and it may not be that helpful for me. But again, I don't know the details here, and the person hasn't signed it. But I hope that that at least says something to this kind of thing. It's very, very common, so I'm glad of the note. It's really common especially around this territory with the pīti and the sukha, given, I think, some of how we've been educated in our culture.

Okay. I wanted to just throw a few things out there, and then we'll see if there are any more. Well, are there any more questions, live? Yeah, please.

Q5: the importance of perceiving everything as the nimitta or a manifestation of it; applying SASSIE to other qualities

Yogi: I started to practise the walking around jhāna thing, and it was really lovely. I was really pleased that it opened up. It was very beautiful. And it got into a space where it was kind of like I've had before when I've done mettā, and also in soulmaking practices, where it feels like everything has that quality, where I'm walking around the space like that. And I was just wondering, one, is that what it's supposed to be like? And two, I was also wondering, I guess it feels like focusing on that nimitta and then SASSIE'ing it up [Rob laughs], that kind of happens.

Rob: I like that!

Yogi: I wondered, can you do that with any object that is kind of like an open-hearted well-being kind of object? Because I've done it with mettā, and yeah, in soulmaking practice, but I've never practised things like brahmavihāras or anything else.

Rob: So let's do the first question first. Walking around, and with this primary nimitta quality, goes very well, and then you notice that basically everything is perceived almost as that nimitta, or as if it's a manifestation? Yeah, very normal. Very glad that it happened. It's extremely important. I'll come back to it later, but basically it's the dependent arising of perception, and it has everything to do with the emptiness.

We could choose any quality, but let's say I experience it with something like mettā. Let's say I experience, at first, I think, "Mettā is from me, and I do it, and I sort of crank it round and round, and then at a certain point it begins to come out of me to another person or all beings." Then I begin to experience another sense where the universe is mettā, or the universe is made of mettā, or everything shines that forth, or that's its real substance or whatever. If I experience that -- I don't know -- three times or five times, it will be nice, you know? It will be a nice experience. If I experience it -- I don't know -- 500 times, and I'm really going back and forth between that perception of the world and our usual perception of the world in Western culture, which is "Of course the world is not love. Of course this glass is not love. It's made of whatever the chemical composition of glass is, and then there's the water, and that's the reality. And of course a being is made up of their molecules, and they're not love, or a form of love, or a spark of love."

But if I really start going in and out, and experiencing a lot, a lot, a lot, the very going in and out of it starts to relativize or dislodge this entrenched view about "That's really reality, and this is just a nice experience that I'm having occasionally." I really start to wonder, well, which is real? Some people then go to, "Okay, the love is real one," yeah? But again, the question is, it's really, really good to live there, and hang out there, and even have that view, perhaps for a long time, but at some point I'm going to want to even go beyond that, and realize something about the emptiness of perception, the dependent arising of perception. So we'll get more and more into that. I may even speak about it again tomorrow, but as you get more into the later jhānas, this becomes really, really an important element, I would say, of what is significant in jhāna practice. Again, we're back to this question: what's actually significant, and what's less significant? This, for me, turns out to be extremely significant, and beautiful, and lovely. So is that enough for now? Yeah? And it's a theme that we'll come back to at least once, I think.

Yogi: There was just a second question ...

Rob: Yeah, okay, so "Can I SASSIE up any quality?" is the question. Well, there may be ones that I could, but I'm not going to enjoy it -- so the E at the end, like hatred -- well, actually, hatred, for some people, can be enjoyable, to a certain degree, for some time, but there are probably ones ... self-hatred is probably not something I can get into and really enjoy, so the E at the end won't be possible, for example. But in terms of skilful qualities, what the Buddha would call kusala, skilful qualities, wholesome qualities, I want to say yeah, probably. One of the things that can happen in soulmaking practice is different kinds of spaces open up, and then one can absorb into them more or less, and there's just an infinite amount. My initial response is yeah, probably. But, in a way, on this retreat -- again, what's the primary nimitta, what's the primary thing that we're doing that with? Is that okay? Good. Okay.

[52:49, pause in questions]

There were a few little things I wanted to just throw out. They all refer to things I've said before, but I'll maybe just say them slightly differently, and that may help them to land a bit better. One is: with the second jhāna -- I actually can't remember if I said this when we talked about the second jhāna -- with the sukha (that's the primary nimitta of the second jhāna), we really want, eventually, to experience that whole range of sukha, really the whole range. So it can get very, very sort of ecstatically happy, bubbly, laughing, etc., on one extreme, and on the other extreme, it can get very, very serene -- it's nowhere near laughter; there aren't many bubbles in it, etc. -- and everything in between. And as I said, maybe even with love, without love -- that's a bit secondary. But we want to really know that whole range, that whole territory. That's what I said about getting familiar with a jhāna, when we take the time to marinate and master it. I used to say to people it's like knowing the library at Gaia House. I'd use that example because I spent so many hours in there doing interviews. But it's like you can put your head in the room and say, "Yeah, it's a library. It's got books in it," and then close the door, or you can really know every square inch. It's a big room, and it's got lots of complexity, and there's this little bit on the carpet here, and there's this little angle where the windows meet the wall, and there's this bit of the bookcase there that's chipped or whatever. You can really, really know a place, a territory, or not.

So we want to know the whole range. We want to be comfortable, actually. This is more what I wanted to say. We want to be comfortable with that whole range and enjoy that whole range, all of it. So we need to get to a place where the whole range is really comfortable for us, and enjoyable, and we know and feel its value, of the whole range. Every place on that range, we want to feel like, "I love this. I love this." It's like asking a musician, or a chef, or someone who's really into something, "What's your favourite food?", or "What's your favourite piece of music?" Someone who's really into something is not going to give you one answer. They're going to be, "I ca-, I can't!" They're going to give you, like, "Okay, I can narrow it down to ten" or something. It's the same thing with the bandwidth, the bandwidths of happiness. It's like, "I love that, but I also love this. I love the bubbly, but I also love the really serene one, and the bit in the middle is pretty nice too." So we really want to be comfortable with the whole range, enjoy the whole range, know and feel its value.

This is part of letting it do its work on the being -- on the heart, on the soul, and also on the body. Marinating with this sense of loving and enjoying and opening, etc., it does work. It does work on the being. It does work on the heart. So what's, of course, common for probably any human being is that certain emotions are more frequently gravitated to, or of the whole emotional spectrum that a human being can have, there are certain ones that a certain personality tends to gravitate towards this kind of thing, and tends, maybe, relatively speaking, to avoid more of the other ones. So some people, very common, gravitate towards a subtle kind of -- well, whatever it is; it could be anything. But oftentimes, for example, one might find they're avoiding the really bubbly happiness.

We're now talking about psychology and energetic make-up -- what's my propensity, my habit of my psychology? And part of the power of jhāna practice, again, is to open all that up, and really have the whole thing available to us. If you ask me what does it mean to be a free human being, part of it, to me, means having the whole range -- having the whole range, the whole playground, the whole delicious range, including the really difficult. I can experience really hard grief, and grieve with the world, and I can experience this incredibly bubbly, giggling laughter-like thing, and there's no either/or. There's an either/or in the same moment, but one is free, and one's not scared of any of that, or holding back. One's letting all that range work on the heart, work on the soul, work on the being. It ends up being wide, having that range and that freedom. So that was one thing.

[inaudible question in background] Yeah, so the question is, "Is that also true with pīti?" Ah, that's a good question. I don't know. I think, as a teacher, I would be less insistent about that with the pīti than with the happiness, because I'm not sure if, you know, experiencing, let's say, the really intense ... Let's turn it around: what I am sure about is experiencing subtle pīti, going a little back to Nic's question, that that's important for everyone, that one needs to be able to even notice it, and tune to it, and be able to enjoy it. Why? Because I don't want to be always having really super strong, and then not be able to notice something that's more subtle, not be able to tune to it, and kind of turn my nose up at it, because that's that same kind of negative "it's not good enough" thing.

So the subtle end of pīti, I would say everyone needs. With the stronger end, I'm just not sure, Lauren. I don't know what the answer is. I feel less inclined to insist on that. I don't know. I think it's a personal thing. This is just my opinion now. If I step back from that particular question, and again, I think about human freedom, etc., and what it means to be liberated, I do feel (and I think I've said it in here on this retreat, just very briefly) that sometimes certain people may be holding their energy in or holding it back habitually, so that they're kind of a little bit not allowing things to build up, and oftentimes they don't even know that. It's just so familiar as a kind of psychological energetics -- I'm not just talking about in meditation; I'm talking about in the whole life -- so that for them to really open and surrender, or really even to have a lot of energy, it's like it's just a territory that they don't go towards, or they don't allow [it to] happen. They don't know that they're not allowing it by this subtle holding. It's very, very subtle, how that can get blocked.

And sometimes, for some people -- and again, I mentioned someone -- she was convinced that what she needs is to focus more; my opinion is actually what she needs is to learn to let energy build and to open it more. Does that mean that she needs the super-intense pīti? I don't know. But it seems to me, psychologically, knowing her over some years, that that's actually something. But I would feel a bit tentative about saying that about the pīti in general, like for everyone, or in terms of the pīti. Does this make sense? So for me, with the intense end of the pīti, I think it would be more an individual question, for me as a teacher, and together we would kind of sense. You know, for these kinds of things, it's also a matter of, like, is it the right time to even bring this up with a student? Or at the moment, is it like, "Well, there's nothing they're going to be able to do with it, anyway, and it's probably only going to bring self-judgment?" There are all kinds of factors involved, and also what they want, because at the end of the day, it's what they want, and it's also their vision of awakening, you know?

So if a view and vision of awakening is of a sort of, "Actually, what awakened people look like and what they act like is very, very even and equanimous, and they don't show big eruptions of emotion, and they don't experience those. They're sort of more mature," if one has that whole view -- and again, it can be semi-conscious; it can be a teaching that's verbally delivered, or just one has "I've just seen that over and over," whoever the 'I' is, "in the Buddhist world, with people who are supposed to be respected, so I assume that's how a seasoned practitioner comports themself, and that's their range," etc. So if a person is actually -- that's their view of awakening, and "That's what I want. I want to be like that," it's up to them. It's their life, and their emotions, and their body. It's not up to me, unless they really say to me (which is very rare for a student to say to me), "Tell me everything you think," or "What do you want?" I've only had one person who said that to me, I think. It was Robert. It's very, very rare. [To Robert] Which I hope you still don't regret. [laughter]

So as a teacher, you have to respect people's choices and their views, you know? In talks -- this is a way longer answer than you wanted, but in Dharma talks, I do find myself kind of shaking up those whole views, like, "Is that what awakening is? Are you unconsciously thinking of it like this?" But one-to-one, as a teacher, I tend to be very unpushy, and very much like, "What does this person want? What's the right timing? What are they asking for?" A talk, to me, is a different thing, especially, as I said, when it goes out on the internet. I feel like I have a different responsibility when something's being recorded. You're asking the question now, but I'm answering it to, as I said -- I'm answering you, but I'm answering people I don't know. So does that make sense, or have I just complicated and sort of made a bomb somewhere? [laughter]

So I think it's really important. I don't actually know the answer, or I feel unsure with regard to the pīti. But with the happiness, yeah, I think I would a little bit more insist on that, in this way of teaching the jhānas. Again, if I think of the jhānas as just all I'm doing is getting more and more concentrated, more and more able to hold my mind, then none of this matters, you know? It's just a matter of, like, "Okay, as you do that, you'll notice that you go through these different stages, but basically what's most important is are you thinking, are you not thinking, and how steadily can you hold your mind on an object?" But to me, that's not -- again, we're back to large framework, and the implications that has for what I'm doing. Is that okay? Yeah? Okay. Thank you for asking though.

Okay, so second thing I wanted to say was, back to the effort thing, as we do all this, the effort question never goes away. It only gets more subtle, if anything. But we should never be totally abandoning it, and we need to be willing to overshoot -- both overshoot the effort at times, and undershoot, overshoot and undershoot the mark of Right Effort at any moment. I need to be willing to do that, and taste that, and recognize what it feels like: "Oh, when I really overshoot, I get a headache in between my eyes, and I ..." whatever it is, "and when I undershoot, I fall asleep." Those are really extreme, but even with the subtle overshooting and undershooting, I really need to get a sense, recognize, "Oh, that's what that feels like," and to do that, I have to be willing. I have to be willing to actually, "Let's try a bit more," or "Let's try a bit less," whatever my habit is. So we're back to this question of inertia. Remember we were talking about inertia in the first couple of days? Do I have inertia with effort levels? And the opposite of inertia is what? Fluidity, malleability, ease of movement. Am I willing to just slide that effort up and down and play with it? "Oh, yeah, too much. Oh, yeah, not enough," whatever, in this moment.

So inertia creeps in certainly to our meditation practice, certainly to our jhāna practice, and actually to our lives in all kinds of ways. One ongoing inquiry is, "Where is there inertia? Where might there be inertia for me?" But that's part of developing the skill and the art with effort levels. And then, as we said, we're playing with the intensity of the effort, up and down, the intensity, delicacy, all that. Remember -- intensity of probing, but also intensity of opening. We don't tend to think of opening or abandoning and surrendering as being something that one can do intensely, or maybe radically is a better word. So we really want to get the feel for, again, the whole spectrum on those dimmer switches of intensity, and get the feel for being able to play with -- they're up to us; it's deliberate. We can change that fader switch.

So that was the second thing. The third thing occurred to me. Here's a question. And again, it's one of these things that may not apply now, but it may apply now. But the next time that you feel ...

I just want to qualify the thing I said about Robert. [laughs] Many times, people have asked me, in a certain moment, or with regard to a certain issue or a certain thing they're working on, but my memory is you just said that more universally. But many times people will say, "Well, I'm working with this image. What do you see, or what do you think is helpful?" Okay. [laughter] Is it teatime? [laughter] No.

So the third thing. This may or may not be relevant now. It doesn't matter. But it's something you can play with, a little game that I think might be really, really fruitful, as a kind of mental exercise or a kind of thought experiment or something. Okay, so it's got a few parts to it. The first part of this game is you entertain the idea that whatever your mind is kind of snagged on, if your mind is snagged on something at a certain time, if it's circling around something, some issue, or snagged on some issue, or if it feels like it's being held back by something -- either a little bit, like really subtly, or quite a lot -- or dragged somewhere by something, little or in a large way, in a kind of less strong way, what if you entertain the idea that actually that issue, and its effect on you, has as its real root, its real origin, a hindrance? It's not about what I think it is. It's just a game! [woman laughs, then Rob laughs] She knows me too well. [laughter] I actually entertain a concept first, this concept that actually hindrances are more originary, they're the origins of things that we then later don't recognize as hindrances. They're like seedlings that sprout, and then we have a tree, and we see a tree, and we don't recognize the seed.

So this is related to what I said: if we're not careful, hindrances become papañca. We said papañca is the opposite of samādhi, like completely, right? Did we all agree on that? Yeah? It's completely the opposite of samādhi. I'm circling around an issue or whatever. Sometimes it can be a very noble issue or whatever, so I'm not insisting every time we're thinking about something, or every time we're upset -- we're just playing a game here, like a thought game. No matter how noble the issue, how important it seems, how important to my soul, etc., I just play with that view: maybe the true origin of this thing is a hindrance. And what has happened is that hindrance has not been recognized as a hindrance, and it's been allowed to grow up and become a poisonous papañca tree, because without a lot of care and practice, that's what happens with hindrances. That's what they do. It's part of why I said we get to a place where we don't believe the hindrances. They can seem so convincing. Even being really upset about this or that political issue, sometimes what's happening there is aversion. A part of us obviously really cares about this, and sometimes it's just our aversion is hooking into this particular issue. It can all sound "yeah, yeah, yeah," but there's actually a mixed -- at times mixed, at times it's more one or more the other, sometimes.

So we want to encourage the quietening of papañca, because papañca is the opposite, and the papañca prevents samādhi. Where there's papañca, there's no samādhi. Where there's samādhi, there's no papañca. They cannot coexist. What we're doing here is, if we play this little game, we're kind of tracing back the papañca, through the aid of entertaining a certain conceptual possibility, that it might have a hindrance as its root, and tracing it back to its hindrance. Then we can work on it as a hindrance. So it may not feel relevant at all now, but it might actually turn out to be really, really helpful as an exercise.

One of the teachers I studied jhāna practice with, that was their main teaching on jhāna practice: this is really the point of jhāna and samādhi. Obviously I've talked about it, but I want to kind of emphasize it more now. I don't agree, or it doesn't appeal to me that that would be the main thing, but it's hugely powerful, and there are teachers out there, and you may well encounter them, that this is the main thing that we're doing, so this is the main thing that we want to watch out for -- papañca, relating that to hindrances, dealing with the hindrances allows the samādhi. That's actually the most important thing. (This is that person's teaching.) I actually feel it was valuable -- it's a very valuable teaching.

So just a game. Just very light. Play with it. You're not signing up to "I believe this idea forever about all emotions, and I can never change my mind" or anything like that. You're just entertaining a certain concept and seeing what happens for five minutes or whatever it is. Kirsten, was that your question? Yeah.

Q6: importance of accurately identifying a particular hindrance

Yogi: I'll keep it very short. I started to do this a little bit, and then sometimes I'm not clear what the hindrance is exactly. It might be a mixture, and then I might get lost a little bit in this, so then I might go to restlessness. I just want to know how accurate it is, or how important an accuracy of the hindrance is then, to define the hindrance.

Rob: Thank you. That's really important. I just jotted that very briefly before coming in. What we often get is multiple hindrance attacks, so yeah, it can be -- in fact, maybe usually hindrances come in gangs, you know? So it's probably more than one, and that's fine. Maybe you can split them or whatever, or maybe even just thinking of that -- just see what helps.

Yogi: Sometimes just a notion it's a hindrance, or hindrances, already takes ...

Rob: That's what I mean. Sometimes the precision of the identification is not important. It's just, as I said, playing with a certain framework can actually reframe: "Oh, maybe this is a hindrance, and I don't even know what the hindrance is." It doesn't matter. Just that can be enough. Other times, it might be, "No, I need to get clearer what the hindrance is." But I think the power is more in the general conception here, rather than the identifying -- or rather, that has a lot of power. You'll have to see in each instance, yeah, but I don't think in every instance it's necessary to identify it, and many times, many instances, there will be multiple hindrances going on, and two ganging up, whatever. Yeah?

Q7: figuring out what helps when working with emotions

Yogi: I've been playing, I think, this game a bit with the whole retreat, and it's been really helpful, until yesterday when I fell down a hindrance cliff, and then I just, when I was in it, got so angry at the question. Ultimately I think it was a self-doubt hindrance cliff that I fell down, but I had to really take some time before I could play the game without it sort of working myself up even more. So I'm wondering around timing of the game, or in this context, because I know I've worked with you with emotion in very different ways, and I brought in some of that, which helped, but when do you know? I mean, maybe the answer is you know if it's making it worse. When do you go, "Okay, stop playing that game and do something else?"

Rob: Yeah, thank you. That's really important. A few things there, just to draw out what's really in your question anyway. Again, everything, what I just said is -- again, what I said in the opening and whenever -- how we're working with emotions on this retreat is in a much larger context for me of going towards, opening, working in skilful ways, soulmaking with emotions. And that feels really, really important. So partly, for you, or for anyone, just knowing that, as well, putting it in that larger context, it reminds something in the being. So just that might be enough, because, let's say, if our soul feels like it's getting squashed into a box, it's going to kick up a fuss, and it should, you know? It absolutely should. Does that make sense?

So sometimes it might be enough just to remind myself of what bigger vision I have, you have, with regard to human emotional life. And we're not talking about it much at all on this retreat, and I explained all that, but a different retreat, you know -- I have done retreats where the primary thing is working with emotions in certain ways. But it's vast, emotions. If I tell my soul, "It's vast. This is just a game we're playing now," that might help in itself. But even then, it might be that it's not the right time. So always the question is: what helps? How much time does it take to recognize this is really not -- I don't know, you know? But you get a sense. This is a very common sort of discernment that one needs to make around emotions in any kind of Dharma practice. It's like I choose a certain way of working with it, and then, after a while, I have to ask myself, "Is this really helping? Or is this not helping?" I don't know how long that while is, but certainly some minutes. But after a while, if it's not [helping], then I have to come out and do something else. If it's just a matter of cooling off, it might then be that the hindrance has just abated, or it might be that in the cooling-off period I've somehow, even sub-consciously, remembered the bigger picture of emotions.

I think the point more, kind of what I want to convey, is are we willing -- again, do we have the freedom -- to view emotions that way sometimes? Do I have a freedom of a range of view? And I'm not afraid. Because some people get very afraid of certain emotions, and some people get very afraid of letting certain emotions go quiet. Do I have no fear on either side? Do I have freedom and skill on either side? That's kind of where we want to get to eventually. And then, also, a wisdom -- just knowing that sometimes an emotion can actually be a hindrance, or it's most helpfully viewed that way in origin, and that's how we need to relate to it.

So the thing I wanted to communicate is sometimes we're so in what we're in at any time that it just doesn't occur to us to think that this could be a hindrance, and we're so used to looking at emotions another way. So it's more a big-view thing. And then there might be, as I said, periods of time, or periods of practice, where you're much more leaning into a certain relationship with things, like emotions, and then other periods where we're [in a] much different relationship. But if I think back, you know, to long retreat times -- this isn't even for negative emotions; it's beautiful emotions -- I remember two instances at Gaia House. One was a short-lived thing, and the other was a more general realization. The more short-lived thing was -- I can't even put it in a context, but it was probably that I was doing samādhi practice for a stretch, and I just either remembered by heart a Mary Oliver poem about an owl ... I can't remember the context, but I went for a walk, and I was reciting that to myself, and was really touched, deeply touched by the beauty of it, and had kind of realized, "My soul needs that." My soul needs, in that moment, that particular poem, but also not just -- it's weird -- not just pīti and sukha. It's strange. We have this banquet here that we're talking about, but actually, I think the soul is richer than that, you know? So that's one thing.

It was also, I remember, near the beginning of retreat, so there was still a question for me, like, "Okay, was that restlessness, just settling into this retreat?" I don't know. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn't. But I can also see that more generally, it's like, if you asked me, "Would you only ever want to experience pīti, sukha, peacefulness, stillness, and all the eight jhānas, and that was your whole emotional range?", I would say no. I wouldn't like that. I would like the whole range, please, thank you very much -- including, like I said, including the grief, including even anger and all that. This is more a soulmaking thing.

So that was more a moment. It all settled down, but I was still left afterwards wondering, "Hmm, I wonder if that was just not quite settled yet on the retreat?" It was, like, day four of a long retreat or something -- I can't remember. But anyway, that was a question. The other thing -- and I haven't mentioned this yet -- is that, for me, I can't remember exactly, but I was exploring, again, for a long time, really marinating and making my intention very clear on -- I can't remember how many jhānas, but let's say the first four, like that was my territory. I was on a long retreat, and at a certain point I realized, wonderful as they are, I'm actually missing something more mystical. So they're lovely experiences. And we'll talk tomorrow about the third jhāna, hopefully. There is definitely the beginnings of a mystical sense, a sense of sacredness. But you can also very much practise those jhānas and not really have much sense at all of a mystical sense, and they're not, I would say, again, primary. For me, my tendency, my yearning is very much towards the mystical. But they're not really that primary in them. And I know lots of people that practised those first four jhānas without any mystical sense. Again, it's related to the whole big conceptual framework: what are we doing here? What's important, etc.?

But I realized, for me, I feel something missing here. Again, it was in the context of a long solo retreat, and I knew that I had to keep my intention steady. We're back to that question about keeping [the intention steady]. I think recognizing it was very helpful. I didn't then change what practices were ... I can't remember what I did. Whatever I did worked, but it wasn't a kind of radical shift or change of direction. It was maybe just including something at the sides a bit more, or something like that. Again, that's probably a much longer answer than you wanted, but does that make sense, what I just said? Yeah?

Okay, Marco. This has to be the last one. Please. [laughs]

Yogi: [inaudible] ... thumbs up.

Rob: Oh, thumbs up? Good, okay. [laughter]

Yogi: Rob, was a part of you recognizing that retreat in the context of the rest of your life of practice? It helped you drop in ...

Rob: Drop in to?

Yogi: Drop in to focusing on [inaudible].

Rob: Maybe, yeah. Maybe it was recognizing that, you know, I only missed the mystical because I knew the mystical. Maybe were it something that I had never experienced outside ... Let's say I was a soul that wanted the mystical, but hadn't experienced the mystical, and then there were the four jhānas: "Well, these are great." Maybe I would have a vague sense of "I'm missing something. As wonderful as this is, absolutely wonderful as this is, I'm still missing something." Maybe I would have had that sense, but not quite known what it was I was missing. I don't know. But back then, I'd had quite a lot of different ... all kinds of things, and I think a part of me, yeah, in the context, was ... But recognizing, "Yeah, I can go back to that. I'm not signing up to this forever: 'I will stay in the four jhānas as long as I can, and do nothing else.'" I never signed up to that. So maybe, yeah, that larger context, and a larger sense of possibility was helped, maybe. Yeah. I probably did.

Okay, we need to end, so let's have a bit of quiet together, please.

[silence]

Okay, thank you, everybody, and time for tea.