Transcription
Okey-doke. So I think we'll have some questions today, if there are any. If not, I've got some that people have left in notes, and also just a few little things that I wanted to put out there. Okay, so, please, anybody. Is that Laurence? Yeah.
Q1: transforming emotions, differentiating between sadness and feeling touched; staying steady with the intention for jhāna practice
Yogi: So my question is around emotion and jhāna. Yeah, so, emotion's going to come up in practice, and in a retreat, and the first day's instruction to put down the difficult, and to tune into the joy and the beauty and the appreciation, there's a certain point where it feels like they're not mutually exclusive. So noticing sadness coming up, and noticing the beauty of the sadness, for example. So in the body, rather than necessarily getting into a story and a self-view around some sadness, actually noticing the warmth in the heart around sadness, and the beauty of it; noticing the sensations of the eyes watering up, and that being seen as deeply beautiful; and a couple of times, noticing how actually those sensations can become pīti. It's like, "Oh, this is interesting. This could actually become a springboard into jhāna, from the sense of appreciation of the emotional spectrum." And also noticing, actually, that the quieter the mind becomes, and the more the sense of the body and the mind become collected, that when there are thoughts around the emotions, that actually there's a much deeper sense of kind of personal insight around what can be revealed from those emotions, and how to work with them in the life, or in the imagination, or on the cushion.
So I want to ask you, in relation to this -- and similar things with anger kind of having flavours of less ill-will and papañca, and becoming more a sense of power, personal power and conflict resolution -- that sense in the body of, "Actually, this could be really quite a skilful place to be in." So I wanted to ask you, specifically in terms of this retreat, what would be your guidance on working with emotions when they come up -- whether to hang out with them, listen to them, explore them, cultivate them in a quasi-jhānic state, or whether to notice them, steer into the joy, and lessen the fabrication of the emotion.
Rob: Okay. Thank you. Let's see if I get all that. So, yeah: context, context, context. The context of this retreat, and that retreat, or each person's version of this retreat, is in the context of each person's life of practice, larger practice, and each person's life, okay? So if, for example, this thing about anger, actually being able to transform it, kind of filter out the poisonous elements and transform it into something that's just power -- not power over, but just power: the ability not to shrink, not to go crazy, not to spit poison everywhere, but just to be powerful and upright and do what needs to be done -- that's a really skilful thing. It's not the primary objective and intention of this retreat. It may be that, in practising jhānas, as you say, there's just more clarity, there's more sensitivity, there's more energy body awareness, because of the way we're practising the jhānas, or primarily, because I'm emphasizing a lot about sensitivity and attunement and all that. It could be that the possibility to make those kinds of transformations -- I want to ask you about the other one, the other example you gave, but the possibility of making those kinds of transformations is actually increased on this retreat, and a person sees, maybe for the first times, these kinds of possibilities.
So that's great, and it's something to note. And on the course of this retreat, it still takes very much second place, so that when there's a choice, it's go towards the joy, go towards the pīti, etc. In the context of one's life, I will always say "both/and." We want everything, and we want to not be afraid of doing this because when I'm doing this I'm not doing that, or doing that because then I'm not doing this -- not be afraid of the territory there, be able to do both, have accessible both, and really just left with, "What would be skilful right now?"
The kind of overriding, determinative factor of this retreat is that if we want to do jhānas, like I said right from the beginning, the intention has to stay really steady. Otherwise, very easily, it gets into all these other explorations -- wonderful as they are, and really important as they are in the larger context, but for a jhāna retreat (and this goes for a solitary jhāna retreat or whatever it is), the intention needs to stay steady.
I don't think I said "put down the difficult" in the opening, so much as this thing about context, and let it take second place, and what are we trying to do, and can I see the context and see this retreat in that larger context, that larger freedom and range of possibility which I want, and recognize, "Okay, but just for now, I'm going to do this"? So you could, for example, just bookmark those two possibilities that you mentioned -- well, they're slightly different. Let's say the second one, the transformation of anger -- I'll come back to the first one, because I was a little unclear about it. You could bookmark that, and say, "I'm going to practise that later," you know? I mean, that would be the absolutely strict way of doing it, but, you know, of course you can have a little wiggle room at the sides of things. It's just if that gets too much, the whole kind of current of intention starts to fray. We really have to take care of the intention to cohere it. But it sounds like it would be a really good idea for you to explore that thing with anger and transforming it. It's a really, really good thing to be able to do. Most people are just kind of victims of their own anger when it comes up, don't have the skill to transform it in that kind of way. So to be able to do that is great.
It might be that it feels a little bit easier when you're -- you're not actually even on retreat; you're kind of half on retreat, so that's encouraging. Remember, you and I talked about the grey area being important -- not off retreat, not on retreat, but this kind of grey area -- to be able to kind of be clear, "What am I doing in practice?", to pick up things in practice, to notice things. So this is really encouraging. It's not saying, "I need to be on retreat fully to notice these kinds of things and be able to transform them." It's telling you something about the grey area. Is there really so much duality between being on retreat and not retreat? What I really meant by 'grey area' is get to see it all as grey, really. Even on retreat, I'm not really on retreat. I'm just living in a sort of hotel in Devon where there's nothing much to do but meditate. [laughter] It can be a much more skilful way of thinking about it, because "retreat," and it's all like, "Oh, my God, retreat. Okay. Get to work," and it all becomes so tight, or retreat is where I behave really, really well, and then out there, I get into a really bad habit. [laughter] This is really, really important. So when you and I had that conversation about the grey area, I really meant "just see everything as grey." Everything is just a different shade of grey, or different shade of purple -- whatever you like, you know?
So that's really important, but yeah, primarily we bookmark it for later. The fact that you're noticing it, the fact that it feels possible, that's great. It may be just as noticeable, just as possible outside of retreat (and I hope it is), or just fractionally less. But that 'fractionally less,' you just need to, "Okay." If you want to learn that, you can learn it, and it's really priceless, this transformation of anger that way (also the larger view about purple).
In terms of the first thing, the first example you gave, you used the word 'sadness,' and I'm just wondering whether it was more just that sometimes the heart is in a state of being touched, and tears come, and strictly speaking, it's not sadness. I'm not sad that X or Y happened, or that I've lost A or B, or whatever. This is actually quite important, a distinction to make. I would say as we develop as human beings, but certainly as we develop as meditators, we should be moving more and more into that territory where the heart is very easily touched, and tears are not strangers -- but not tears where we're just kind of sinking and collapsing, and we just end up being a puddle, with no power or no clarity or anything. So that kind of heart opening, or capacity to be touched, is a really, really important, I think, element or strand of the path, by all kinds of things -- beauty, nature, companionship, all kinds of things. Sometimes the touching feels with a smile and joy, and sometimes the touching feels with tears, but it doesn't actually equate to sadness. So just from what you said, I wonder what distinction you would make now between the two.
Yogi: Looking back on it, actually, I was maybe a little quick to use the word 'sadness.' The example that I'm thinking of was quite a few days ago. It was more, actually, a beauty that was so touching it brought sadness.
Rob: Brought sadness, or brought tears?
Yogi: Yeah, sorry -- I did it twice now! Yeah, it brought tears.
Rob: Okay.
Yogi: Looking at it now, I was exploring some of that kind of secondary intention of being with the emotion, rather than the primary intention of the jhāna practice. There was a kind of capacity, a sense of a capacity, to be with it a lot more in times where tears would really come practising here, and sensing beauty. Here was a sense of, "I wonder, what's the capacity, what's the stamina, for perceiving beauty? Can I play with that a little? Where do the tears come, if I extend that range?" So yeah, I guess it was just things to note, and also to then notice what's going on in the body, and can that be perceived as pleasurable: "Oh, look, pīti."
Rob: Yeah, great. So that's all really wonderful. Let me just pick out a few things there. This distinction that I've been trying to make between sadness and being touched, or touchable, or moved -- to me, that's a really important distinction. I encounter it a lot in yogis. It hasn't actually occurred to them -- there are tears or something, or there's a quivering in the heart: "I must be sad," or "I must be upset." And hmm, you know, not necessarily. So that's actually a really important distinction. When we talk about emotions generally, I would say, and I have said, that I don't think we're ever going to exhaust what there is to explore about emotions as human beings. So you just rattled off, "Oh, I could do this. Where is the boundary? How much can I tolerate? What if I see it this way? Can it turn into this?" These are just one, two, three right there, and there's so much more -- in terms of experience, but also in terms of just how we're conceiving emotions. To me, the exploration of emotion, along with several other explorations of a human being, or areas or aspects of our existence, is endless -- endlessly fertile, endlessly rich, you know?
The fact that you're moving into different intentions, it's not right or wrong, but there is something, as I said, really important about being clear and staying with a central intention, if you want to do jhāna practice, if you want that to develop. But that's great. That's really great, Laurence. Well done. And yeah, so definitely that being touched, or being touchable, because it relates to -- it's a kind of open-heartedness, or openness of being, which I said actually that's more primary than anything else in the arising of pīti -- more primary than sticking your mind, nailing your mind to the breath or whatever it is. So you can understand how that fits together. And then to be able to kind of ride that and help it go to pīti -- that's wonderful, all of that. There was another question woven in there, right? I've forgotten what it was.
Yogi: Yeah, I think it was around whether or not emotion can be another springboard to jhāna, and I think you've kind of [?] that with the openness of heart.
Rob: Yeah, we said that. I think there was another one hidden in the middle. But it doesn't matter. We can do it another time. Okay, great. Very good.
Q2: different meanings of the word 'radical'; indicators that one is spending too much time in one jhāna
Yogi: My question is around the word 'radical,' which you use a lot. You've been using [it] more over the years. You've used it in other contexts, in relationship to ethics, insight, and you've also used it now in relationship to jhāna practice. What does that mean, or why is that so important? I think about the Middle Way. It's like, well, it doesn't fit, in a way. Of course, the Buddha was radical in many ways. I'm wondering if you could just elaborate a bit more. Why is that so important? Why has that seemingly become more important over the years now that you're teaching?
Rob: I feel like the word 'radical' gets used in at least three ways in English. One is kind of just 'crazily extreme,' like a radical fundamentalist terrorist or something like that. One is just as a kind of euphemism for something unusual: "It's radical. Wow, what a radical idea! It's unusual." There are others, but the third way is the way I usually mean it more. 'Radical,' the word in English, comes from radix in Latin, which means 'root,' so to go to the root of something. To me, if we say 'radical emptiness,' for example, as an example I might use, [it] would be an understanding of emptiness that goes to the root of absolutely everything. In other words, you can't even go beyond it. If my understanding of emptiness just pertains to selves, for example -- "The self is empty. What there really is is aggregates," for example -- then, to me, that's not a radical [teaching], or one could have a more radical teaching, because the aggregates themselves might be empty. And then the time in which the aggregates exist is also empty, etc. So I tend to use it that way.
When I used it the other way, I think I was talking about practising exchanging self and other radically. I think, yeah, it was a mixture in terms of what I meant, so 'radically' as sort of something like 'more extremely than you might think of,' you know? So we can do a lot of practices a little bit, sort of just dipping our toes in a little bit, or a little bit half-heartedly. What would it be to really, "I'm sitting here, with this pain, and this" whatever it is -- say I'm dying of cancer, you know? It's like, what would it be to practise exchanging self and other, with all that, and I really mean it? "I came to this meditation retreat, and I wanted it to go well, and it doesn't feel like it's going well," and just to completely -- 'completely' is, there, a synonym for 'radically' -- just turn it round: "In this moment, I give up my desire for that, because I'm taking on this frustration, this misery, this failure, these hindrances, this not going well, in the hope that there's some kind of reciprocal gift for someone else that I may never even meet." So, in that sense, and to really do that, and do that full-heartedly, with the totality of one's being. And if you know that practice, you can get down to things like my very body, my atoms, my mind, this thought, that thought -- so there's a radicality in the sense of completeness, to the fundaments of one's being.
So I tend to use it that way, and sometimes it's a bit more just like a sloppy word for 'more than you might usually think' sort of thing. Do I use it more over the years? Maybe. I don't know. It's a commonly used word now in the Dharma, so maybe I'm just kind of upping the ante a little bit on what I mean by it; I'm not sure. I'm not sure what you're asking. Are you just wondering about my teaching, or are you wondering about that word, or why are you asking?
Yogi: I think that answers the question, just those two meanings. I had another question. You've spoken about the levels of mastery, which would indicate that the next jhāna's sort of on its way, if not there already. On the other end, I'm wondering, you know, what would be some of the conditions, or factors, or indicators whereby we'd be spending too much time in a particular jhāna.
Rob: Yeah. Maybe one might have very strong experiences of the next jhāna that just happen to one over and over again, and that might indicate. It's not just, for example, in the second jhāna, happiness once in a while and a little bit; it just keeps going into the second jhāna. It's a very clear, very vivid experience where you can kind of tick a lot of boxes. And maybe, if I've already got a lot of the elements of mastery of the first jhāna, and I can already sit in there a lot, for hours, etc., then am I learning anything new at that point in the first, about the first jhāna? So that's another question: am I learning anything new here? Of course, I may not be learning anything new because I'm not paying attention enough and I'm not playing enough, but I may not be learning anything new because I actually know that territory. So that would be another criterion. Is that okay?
Yogi: Yeah.
Rob: Okay. Good.
[talk begins]
Okay. Shall I throw out a few things I was wanting to say? [22:42] Some of them are quite little. Oh, I made a couple of mistakes in, I think, yesterday's talk. The first is really not that significant, but just in case someone gets wondering and [it] gives them the wrong sense. In that simile about the wanderer through the desert, and I said the desert represents saṃsāra -- actually, that can't be right, because that would imply that the jhānas are nirvāṇa -- or maybe; I don't know, because maybe it's an oasis in a desert. Anyway, maybe the desert represents life run by the hindrances; I don't know. Maybe it represents saṃsāra, and the oasis is not the end of the desert, it's just a little, and you've still got to go further. Maybe. So either one. It doesn't really matter. [laughter]
[23:36] Second mistake, slightly more significant. I don't know if it was a mistake or I just wasn't clear enough. I said something like, "Experiences of deep equanimity or fairly deep equanimity that come from insight meditation are often not actually the third or fourth jhāna, where there's the equanimity kind of coming in such a strong and beautiful way." However, experiences like some of you know, the kind of group of practices that I call the 'vastness of awareness,' as you get into that, there is a real mystical sense of wonder. It is very beautiful. There is a sense of sacredness there. It does really touch you, etc., and it is an experience of deep equanimity. However, those kinds of opening, what I call the practices of vastness of awareness, has a range of depths to it. So it's something that one can open up just a little bit, and may not yet have that kind of almost divinity to it, and sacredness to it, and sense of almost the ultimate.
For example, one level of depth is just all phenomena seem to emerge out of that vastness and disappear back in it. It's like the womb or the source of everything. And that very seeing, it's a bit like when we talked about the nāda sound, and how can you use it in an insight way -- it's just a backdrop. Everything comes out of that, fades back into it. That level of seeing is very, very fruitful for the equanimity, etc. It begins to have a kind of mystical flavour to the whole thing and divine flavour to the whole thing. As you practise more with the vastness of awareness, and it goes even deeper, there's a sense where everything has one substance, and that substance is awareness; everything is awareness. Now we're really moving into a mystical sense of things, and that will have a lot of beauty. So when I said people who have just done insight, who have just opened to equanimity through insight practice, I didn't really mean that, because, if by insight practice you just mean, "I'm just watching, just watching, just being mindful, just being mindful," and kind of letting go with that general encouragement to just watch and let go, that won't take you to these deep ends of vastness of awareness. You actually have to kind of direct it, do something more deliberate, and actually change the practice slightly so that it goes there. Someone just reported they got a bit confused by that, so I hope that helps. In other words, we make the vastness of awareness a practice in itself that's slightly different than regular insight practice. We'd have to change a few things in order for it to really go to these really lovely, deeper levels.
And then two or three people are struggling with, or have been struggling with, kind of working backwards -- not being able to get the first jhāna; not even being able to get pīti or sustain pīti, but being able to, for instance, get the happiness or something deeper. So I want to throw this out in case that's common to anyone, or common at any point later for anyone. A few different things you can try if that's the case. Let's say you can get the happiness, and you're getting more and more fine with that, you're learning the happiness, but pīti just won't happen. If we think about the jhāna factors and everything we've said so far, we should be able to kind of almost surmise these things ourselves. So pīti is, for instance, coarser. Pīti and sukha are both energy body experiences. So I said at first we think of sukha, the happiness, as a mental experience. But that's just at first, once a person has had the pīti and they want to make the distinction between pīti and sukha. Eventually one sees, "Actually, they're both just frequencies of vibration of the energy body, and yes, they have mental components too." But really, one could see the sukha as just a more refined energy body vibration than the pīti.
(1) So what that means, if I want to work backwards, what it means, what it implies, is here I am in the happiness, and it's going well, and I'm kind of in it, and I'm stewing in it, and I'm drinking it in. Then, listening to the mix of frequencies in the energy body, in the happiness, can I notice the coarser ones -- not the more subtle ones, but the coarser ones -- and actually tune to them, and find the enjoyment to them? Because what I attune to is what gets amplified, right? We said that much earlier. So that might be a way of working backwards.
(2) It might also be that, you know, oftentimes, probably most people -- not everyone, but most people -- notice the pīti tends to have an upward current to it. It tends to move up the body, and in a way, when I say "opening, and surrendering, abandoning to the pīti," in a way, you're really opening the body to that upward current, and that's what all this head tilting back business is, if any of you get that a little bit. The body is naturally being opened, or like we said with the question about the feet, it's naturally being opened like that, and it's opening to what, for most people, primarily feels like it's got an upward current in it. It can be really strong. It can be really, really subtle. It can feel like the pīti's actually pretty stable, but within that stability, it's got slight waves, upward waves.
Here's a side point I've just remembered that might be important to say, and I'll come back to what I'm saying, and enumerate it so we won't get lost. Sometimes people say, "Well, I thought you said the pīti had to be steady before we work on it, but I feel these waves, like it comes in waves." So then I ask them, okay, think about the sea. Think about the ocean. If you think about a wave in the ocean, if you think about a wave near the shore, near the sand or whatever it is there, that wave, or that portion of sand, let's say, has times when it has water over it -- a wave breaks over it. And it has times when the water recedes before the next wave comes, and it's bare sand or rock or whatever it is. If you go to a wave 100 metres out, and the sea is deeper there, then I still see, "Oh, there's a wave. There's a wave." It doesn't break, necessarily, out there, but there's a wave, right? There's that undulating motion of the water. But out far to sea there, you're never going to get -- unless there's a tsunami or something -- bare sand to see, or bare rock. You're never going to see the bottom. In other words, out there, the pīti, the water, is actually steady enough. In other words, it never disappears. Within that steadiness, there are waves. So it's not that it has to be totally still; pīti, by its nature, is almost ... well, it might be, but it tends to have currents in it. What we don't want, though, in order to be able to work with pīti, we want to make sure it's not a wave, and then nothing, bare sand, and then a wave, and then nothing, bare sand. So that was a side point.
But generally pīti has these up currents. So if I'm in the second jhāna, it's going well, or I've learnt how to make it go well, and I'm enjoying it, and I'm digging it, but I can't get the pīti, or I can't get the first jhāna, then what I can do is see if I can just notice any upward currents in the energy body experience -- maybe in the happiness or whatever. They might be, at that point, really quite subtle, so again, I have to get my antennae out, and I have to maybe have that delicacy of listening, of receptivity. And within that, I start to notice, "Oh, yeah. There are some upward currents." Again, attuning to them, they amplify, and maybe that takes me to the pīti or amplifies the pīti. That's the second option.
(3) The third option is just imagine upward currents. Don't be afraid to use your imagination in these kinds of practices. I imagine them for a little while, and lo and behold, the next thing: I feel them, and then I can enjoy them, get into them, and the whole experience changes.
(4) Fourth possibility is, okay, here I am in the happiness. It's going well. I still can't get the pīti. Here I am in the happiness, though -- I'm enjoying it, I'm getting into it, all that stuff. I've been in there for a while -- 'a while' meaning really some minutes and minutes and minutes -- and then I just drop a little magic formula in, a little tincture: maybe the word pīti, maybe the word 'rapture,' maybe the word 'ecstasy' or 'bliss,' whatever your word is, and whatever your language is. Again, the mind at these levels with samādhi becomes so malleable, so sensitive, so receptive, that just dropping something like a word in can have a lot of effect. It's a really skilful thing to be able to do in lots of different ways in jhāna practice.
(5) The fifth thing to say is, generally, probably, if that's the problem -- I'm getting okay with the sukha and the second jhāna, but really not so okay with the pīti and the first jhāna -- then you'd want to be hanging out much more in the really bubbly happiness, rather than (if that's my goal, to work backwards that way) too much time in the more serene happiness, because the bubbly one, from our cooking ingredient thing yesterday, has more pīti in it. So there are five things you could try.
Yogi: Rob, can I just ask a follow-up question?
Rob: Oh, sure. Please. Yeah.
Yogi: If you're feeling this pīti as water crashing on the sand, and the sand being bare, can you nudge it sort of further out to sea?
Rob: If your experience is you're feeling the pīti with these breaks, that there's sand there, can you nudge it out further? More often, it's a question of just letting it ripen until that is the case. But, having said that, like everything, it's not so black and white. There's a kind of intermediate possibility. That's naturally where it wants to go, okay? Oftentimes, at first, the first experiences of pīti someone has are more like the waves near the shore, where you get these kind of -- it just comes and then it goes, comes and goes. I'm not even sure how it's coming or what the hell it is or anything. In time, it wants to go there. We can do things -- let's put it in the negative -- we can do things to slow that down, that whole maturing process, and we can do things to just kind of ease its passage, put it that way. The best thing to ease its passage is to make sure when these waves come, I'm somehow neither snatching at them, as the Buddha says -- so I don't snatch at them -- but I'm really making sure I'm open to them. If a wave comes, maybe it has a little after-echo, and then I really want to open to that, you know? So if I'm not fully opening to them, that might be one of the things that actually is just slowing down this maturation process for your jhāna boat to be out there. So that's one thing.
And then another possibility, as well, again, without too much pressure, is even if it feels like it goes badly, and I'm believing the mind that's saying "I can't do this," and whatever it was, or "I've lost it," you know, sometimes it's just worth saying, "What the hell? Let's just play with imagining my body full of pīti," and just a few moments of trying that, even though it feels like it's going to be a pointless thing to do. So there's always that possibility as well. You've got a kind of range of possibilities and answers there, yeah? Okay.
How are your hindrances doing today? Actually, how is your papañca today? How is your papañca doing today compared with yesterday? How is the suffering from your papañca doing compared to two days ago? You know, it's going to be up and down. Wherever you are at the moment, it's going to move. We're so, so interested in that movement, over time, from this high-amplitude, up-and-down business where we're really believing something, and everything's grumpy, and we hate Gaia House, and all that stuff, with applying the antidotes, but even more importantly, with the wisdom: "Am I believing? Am I just a sucker for this thing?", with this kind of questioning of "What am I believing here?" This high amplitude wave, over time -- and it may take weeks or whatever, but this is where we want to get to, that this high amplitude wave becomes just a little sort of, you know, placid caterpillar wiggle. It's really just a sort of energetic "nyeh," you know?
And so much rests on the belief. So much rests on "What am I believing here?" Without care, there's a hindrance, I believe the colouring of perception and the thoughts that the hindrance stimulates, the colouring of perception and the thoughts are believed, and then it becomes papañca, and then that just snowballs. So doubt and aversion, for example -- I was talking with someone yesterday -- even subtle doubt, and even more powerfully, subtle aversion, will colour the memory of, for example, yesterday's wonderfulness, or the joy that you experienced two days ago or three days ago. Aversion -- like craving, like grasping -- is incredibly powerful. It cannot be there without shaping, fabricating, and colouring whatever phenomenon is in consciousness at the same time. Whatever phenomenon -- whether that's a memory, a sight, a sound, a smell, taste, touch, blah blah blah blah blah, the sense of self, whatever -- any degree of aversion is going to colour that. So yesterday it was just whatever it was, three days ago it was wonderful, and now there's a little bit of aversion in the mind, and I look back, and "Eh, it wasn't that good," or whatever it is.
This is what I mean by developing some insight and wisdom in relation to the hindrances, and papañca, and what the Buddha calls the defilements, the kilesas (greed, hatred, delusion -- greed, aversion, I think, is a much better word). And the same thing with the rest of the hindrances -- subtle doubt, etc. I remember -- I can't remember what stage it was; probably sounds like it was getting into the first jhāna, and really doing that over and over -- and at some point, doubt comes. And it wasn't even a really strong doubt. I was sitting cross-legged a lot, and I thought, "I'm probably just sitting on a nerve." I was sitting with my heel in my perineum. "This can't be pīti. It's just I'm pressing on my perineal..." Is there a perineal nerve? [laughter] It's probably a group of nerves. Whatever. And then the mind starts -- just these little things. But aversion is a killer. It's a killer. It kills joy. And connecting again to what we were talking about yesterday with dependent arising and the teaching about karma: a little bit of aversion -- what kind of world do I live in? What does my self feel like? What does my practice feel like? What's my view of things? What's my sense of where I am, who I am?
So for me, the second hindrance -- I can't remember; I should look it up. Maybe later. So they're usually in the order (1) sense desire, (2) ill-will, (3) sloth and torpor, (4) restlessness, (5) doubt. The second one, ill-will, means I wish someone harm. To me, that's a really extreme form of the hindrance. The killer at this point for you will be aversion in a much more subtle way. It's not even towards anyone. It might get towards yourself. But it's aversion. Aversion will be the killer. And aversion can be to any phenomenon whatsoever, any phenomenon -- any sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, thought, memory, any phenomenon of experience, a situation, sensations, a state itself -- we have aversion to a state. So this ends up being really like, "Oh, watch that seed." Watch that seed, because it's extremely powerful, and that seed, like I said, will sprout, and grow, and it will be a whole damn forest if I'm not careful, or even in very subtle seed form, it already is sending out its toxins, colouring the perception. And even if there's not a lot of thinking, we start believing what we're seeing, smelling, tasting, touching. We start believing what we're sensing, coloured through the lens of aversion. So there's something, again, so much of the gift of this practice is in relationship to hindrances, and getting wise in relationship to hindrances. But this is a long-term lesson. It's not something we get [snaps fingers] like that necessarily.
Okay, a couple more little things. I don't know if everyone needs this, but do we need to very briefly review SASSIE, not to get hung up on the wrong things? SASSIE: first S, suffused. I do want it to move towards suffusion -- the whole body saturated and suffused, pervaded and permeated, steeped and drenched, and the whole body involved. Once I've got that, I tick it, and I don't have to bother about it again, okay? It's done. For that sitting, it's done. So there is a goal there, and I try and move towards that goal. Occasionally, depending on where you are in your evolution of practice, it won't spread everywhere. I've tried all my little tricks, da-da-da. It won't spread. Don't worry about it. Eventually it will spread. But there is a goal, and then I'm done with that job, whereas, for example, the A and the two middle S's -- ASS -- are ... [laughter] Actually you spell it differently in the US. But anyway. ASS. It's a little kind of donkey. Where was I? [laughter] These are infinite. I will never come to a point where there's no more possibility. There will never be a moment in any meditation I ever do in my life where I cannot improve whatever degree of absorption I've had, where the object cannot sustain either longer in time (the pīti or the sukha longer in time) or with less nano-, micro-, pico-interruptions, and the same goes with the mind, that the mind can't sustain either longer in time or with less kind of nano-, micro-, pico-interruptions.
So they're infinite. Now, what does that mean about how I relate to them, if they're infinite? It does something to the goal-oriented mind and the judgmental and the measuring mind. Wherever I am, the direction is that way. And if I feel like, "Wow, I'm so far gone that way! I've never gone this far before. This is amazing!", great. That's wonderful. And the direction is still that way. And if it's not going so well, the direction is still that way. There's nothing to judge here. These things will vary from time to time. I'm gradually working at my skill. But because they're infinite, it releases me from any kind of success/failure notion. This is really, really important. Don't get hung up on the wrong things. This is why I give the SASSIE, partly -- what do I do now, but also what's important, and what is not so important? What do I need to complete (like the suffusion), and what do I just need to ...? It just tells me what direction to go in.
When we come to the I, the intensity of, let's say, the pīti or whatever it is, it doesn't matter. As long as it's strong enough -- meaning it's pleasant; it's obviously pleasant -- it doesn't matter. I'm not trying to make it more intense. It will get more intense or less intense. It's irrelevant. That completely lets me off the hook of having to worry about it. And however much I'm enjoying, the E, I can enjoy more. So in a way, that's infinite. But part of the art of enjoying is going to be not to pressure myself to do that. But it's a direction, yeah? So these are important in terms of our kind of micro-psychological well-being, which, if we're not careful, can actually, unfortunately, like a poisonous fungus, blossom into our macro-psychological well-being, because we've got hung up on the wrong things, and we just keep judging ourselves for what's actually not the right thing to judge ourselves by.
A little bit related: this business where I keep saying 'marinate' and 'mastery,' 'marination' and 'mastery,' and how, for me, those are really important orientations and aspirations for the way we're practising and the way I would like to communicate all this. 'Mastery' includes trying to sustain it longer, to sit longer, let's say, with the pīti, so I can sit an hour or more, etc., whatever it is, with whichever jhāna. I'm marinating with the elements of SASSIE, and playing with that. All this business -- marinating and mastery -- also includes, sometimes it's not going so well today. Okay. Now I'm going to kind of emphasize, in this sitting, or for the next twenty minutes, I'm just going to emphasize my steadiness of focus -- in a way, partly what I've been a little bit trying to de-emphasize. There are times when it's like, "Okay, that's what I'm going to do." Maybe I can do that with the pīti, which is quite a refined object, and I feel like I need to understand: "Oh, I'm learning to pay attention to a more refined object." It's actually hard. Most people would not be able to do that. So I need to train myself to be able to stay with a more refined object. And that's the micro-view, the kind of subtle view that I have of what I'm doing and what my emphasis is in the next twenty minutes sometimes.
And other times, it's like, "Yeah, I'm working on the eighth jhāna, generally, but actually, right now, what I need to do is go back to my base practice, and work on my focus and steadiness there." All that's normal and available for someone who's just got the view of "mastery is what I'm doing." In other words, it's wide, and there's a range, and we're responsive to shifting the emphasis at different times. It includes quite a lot. So flexibility, responsivity, and inclusiveness.
And in relation to mastery, someone wrote a question, which I have here. Let me read the question, and then maybe say also a couple of things.
We say that the arising of jhāna depends on causes and conditions. We also say that mastery of a jhāna includes being able to enter it at will, which could perhaps be understood as implying a certain independence of at least some causes and conditions. [So there's an apparent contradiction there.] Could you please elaborate on how to relate to the two statements, and how to skilfully relate to the notion of entering at will?
Yeah. Very good. This is exactly one of those things when I said I will contradict myself, but also, more importantly than that, it's an instance of things where, again, we want a range of views, and we don't want to get locked into this view or that view, okay? I would say, for anyone at all, give them the right medical drugs, and their ability to enter a jhāna at will will be severely compromised, I would say [laughs], if you've had enough general anaesthetics or something, you know. Anyone is going to have some limits on their 'enter at will.' It's never going to be 100 per cent of the time, never. You can have illness, be low energy. You could be tired. You could be a million different things. Digestion upset. A lot of different things that will, at times, mean that even someone who's a master, etc., will not, on those occasions, be able to enter at will.
But still, it's good to aspire to. In a way, it relates to the whole teachings about self and the emptiness of self. In a way, to see it as "a jhāna depends on causes and conditions" is a way to conceive of jhāna just without self, without the self coming in and getting all tight about "Can I do this? Can I not? Am I failing? Am I not? What badge do I get? Have I achieved?", etc. It's just causes and conditions. And yet, there is the development of ... From the point of view of the emptiness of self, seeing in terms of causes and conditions is seeing not in terms of self, yeah? But we can also, and we need to in life, and in the Dharma, see in terms of self: "I do this. I choose this ethically. I make this choice. I cultivate this. I cultivate mettā, etc. I choose to cultivate mettā," all that. It's normal and healthy and skilful kind of view or conception of what's happening. Mastery won't -- in other words, setting it up as a goal actually, again, gives us a direction. If I never mentioned it, then people might be just sliding around all over the place, and not getting as much fruit out of the whole practice, because it wouldn't occur to them to try for certain things that just go under this umbrella of 'mastery.' It wouldn't occur to you to try this or that. But if you say, "Oh, there's this thing called mastery. See if you can do it." And it depends on intention. So you can say intention is one of the causes and conditions. Going back to what I said earlier, is intention ever a completely sufficient cause and condition? It's necessary, but not sufficient. Intention, by itself -- give me enough drugs, give me enough this or that, starve me, whatever, too tired, etc. -- intention itself is not sufficient. But I need to mention it because it actually is a very powerful ingredient of the causes and conditions, but it's never sufficient.
The larger point here has to do with teachings about emptiness. And again, I want the range of views. I want to be able to drop. Here's a situation; here's something I have to do; here's something that happened to me; here's something that I did wrong; here's something that I succeeded at; here's something I'm doing great; here's something that people are praising me for; here's something that people are blaming me for. At times, I want to have available to me a way of viewing all that that deconstructs the self out of it. I see in terms of causes and conditions. And that can be extremely liberating and healing, and take the pressure off the self, the self and measuring the self and blaming the self, at times.
But if I get stuck there, and I say, "Well, that must be the right way to view things, because that's Buddhist, right? Not-self, no-self, there is no self, and all that -- emptiness." I think one's stuck in a partial and incomplete view of emptiness. Again, the radical emptiness of self means actually that any view of self, even the view of "there is no self," is eradicated, ripped up from its root. And what that means is all views become available to us, including the view of self. So someone who's really understood the emptiness of things and the emptiness of self can move easily between views that kind of look in a way not in terms of self, and views that look in a way in terms of self. This is really, really, really important. Really important.
To my way of understanding, if one hasn't seen that, one hasn't really gone deep enough. It also just won't make sense in one's life: here, this collection of aggregates wants to marry that collection of aggregates. [laughter] This collection of aggregates would like to have sex with that collection of aggregates. [laughter] This collection of aggregates would like to compose this piece of music in praise for the collection of aggregates that is the universe or whatever. It doesn't ... If we just look that way, there are going to be enormous areas and dimensions of our being, of our lives, of our souls, of our existence that are not supported, and that's going to be a real problem. It'll be a real problem for ourselves. It'll be a real problem for our relationships. It'll be a real problem for the society and the planet. So sometimes you get this shadow side of Buddhism that always wants to deconstruct things and see things that way, when actually I do need to be not just able to comfortably move into a self-view, but able to move into a self-view that's actually beautiful, and soulful, and enriching, and gives meaning and all of that. I want both of those. So these two contradictory teachings -- mastery and at will, and dependent on causes and conditions -- yes, contradictory, complementary, but we want them both, and they're helpful at different times. In a way, they're not completely contradictory. I suppose the truest one is 'dependent on causes and conditions,' of which intention is one, but never completely a sufficient one just by itself. Does that make sense? Is that okay?
Yogi: Yes. [inaudible]
Rob: Yeah. Thank you. It's a shame you didn't have the microphone there. Let me see if I can just ... So Marco's saying, in a way, grateful to the jhāna practice for enabling him to see that there was a hierarchy of views happening here, and the sort of "This is really just causes and conditions" was trumping the view that "Oh, I can do this with my intention." Really, really important, yeah. If we come back: if all these different views are available, the question is, why do I choose this one over that one at any time? If actually they're all legitimate, and I'm given permission, as you say, and "I hereby give you permission," it's like, how am I going to choose between these different views? That becomes the criterion, and that's a really interesting question. Now, classical Dharma, it's very simple: what reduces the suffering here? So we can get attached, like I said, to a view of "It's really just causes and conditions and things like that, and there is no self," and there's a kind of attachment there, but if it comes in too soon, too quickly, and too pervasively, it kind of prevents a lot of other really good stuff opening in our life, and the views, other views, that might, in certain situations, deliver much more relevant fruit.
And like I said, if someone is practising the jhānas and they're starting to get grandiose, "Look what I can do!", as I pointed out when we talked about that, it's very rare. If they're real jhānas, and they're going in and out enough, it's very rare, I think. What's much more [common] is the opposite view: I'm failing at something, and da-da-da. And then this view of, "It's just something that's coming out of causes and conditions. When the causes and conditions are not there, it's not there," you know? So that view, again, it's helpful for the relieving of that suffering of the contraction of a certain self-view, which is judging myself, or ... So I'm using it for that purpose.
But there might be times where someone's adopting the other view: "I can do this." And it feels like that's actually releasing some suffering or counterbalancing some history of suffering that I can't do something -- could be anything. But in classical Dharma, the framework is: "Yeah, there are all these views. Which one do I pick up now to look through, to perceive this situation, in order to reduce whatever suffering is there, in order to heal whatever suffering is there?" That's the criterion for adopting this view or that view. So that's really important. We can add to that, and enrich it, and make it more complex, but I'm not going to do that now.
But this thing about mastery is also quite interesting, because it may well be that -- and this is something to check, I think, in the larger scheme of things, each person to check: do I have somewhere, maybe consciously, maybe really semi-consciously, a kind of philosophy, or a kind of psychology, or a mixture of the two, that, for example, doesn't like the idea of mastery, or doesn't like the idea even of the self's autonomy, as if I much prefer the view of things 'just happening,' and "This thing opened up, so I kind of flowed with that, and then conditions were such that this thing opened up, and I flowed with that"? There can be a lot of beauty in that, a lot of really lovely flow, and a lot of even creativity and all kinds of things, but behind it -- and usually kind of semi-consciously -- is a little bit of an entrenchment in a view that doesn't allow a notion of the autonomous self deciding and acting and choosing X or Y, and perhaps even gaining mastery. Of course, one can be locked in the other view as well.
But this is something, again, in spiritual circles, quite interesting to check out. And again, my opinion is, why can't we have both? Why can't we have both, and have the whole range, and explore what it might be that -- "I don't like that view so much." What's preventing us from seeing the beauty in the view of the self's autonomy, and the self's power to choose, and the self's decision to do something, and work at something, and get something? Or vice versa, but that's much more rare in spiritual circles. So explore that, what's holding us back, what we don't like about it, and actually liberate it so both become available to us. Why not, you know? These are kind of subtle imprisonments that we can hopefully begin to see as we do more practice, whether it's jhāna practice or whatever.
Jhāna practice, as I mentioned a couple of times, it kind of ramps up our ability to see all kinds of really subtle locked places or defilements. So people generally would have no idea that such a practice would do such a thing. You tend to think, "Well, insight practice, when I'm just opening, or mindfulness, where I'm just opening, and kind of being with whatever comes up, and giving everything kind of equal interest, that's where I'm going to notice these things," but actually, there are a lot of hidden things that one can not notice unless you actually try working in certain ways (for instance, with a goal, with the idea of, let's say, mastery, or this or that), and that starts illuminating things, hidden corners, shining lights into hidden corners that we wouldn't otherwise have even realized were there. So to me, there are all kinds of secondary gifts to jhāna practice, which I think each of them are immense, and we don't tend to think that way or realize that at first.
Are there any other questions? Yes. Is that Sabra at the back? Oh, yeah. Please, with the mic. Thank you. Can I just, before you start, say one more thing about that?
A very common experience as you do more jhāna practice -- it will be that you almost feel like the mind has a momentum to go, let's say, to the third jhāna: "I was intending to go to the first jhāna, and it just goes to the third jhāna." As you do more and more, that kind of thing becomes very common. I could just sit here and wait, and the mind will just go somewhere, when you've done a lot of jhāna practice or if there's that propensity. It could be any jhāna. It just wants to go, or I've aimed it there, and it goes over there, or whatever. This gets more and more common, so that a lot of people actually end up practising -- that's how they practise, if they've done a lot of dedicated jhāna practice. They just sit down, and see where it goes. And there's not much intention at all; it's just, "Let's see where I slide on the ice today." And I used to say it's as if the mind has a mind of its own. It's really got this kind of other intention.
So when you've done a lot of jhāna practice, that can be fine, because they're all good places. But I would still balance it with, "Even if it wants to go there, can I still choose to go somewhere else at times?" So really, again, there's this range. Sometimes it might be you need to let it go where it wants for a little bit. The horse wants to go to the carrot shop for a little bit, and then you go to bingo -- whatever. But I think this idea of keeping open the range of freedom, the range of possibilities, to me, is something really, really important. Okay, anyway. Sabra, please.
[questions resume]
Q3: working with locked places in the body, in view, and in mental territory
Yogi: It's just a question a little bit about what you just pointed to about freeze-up, locked places, and really seeing that process over the last couple days, both psychological, but also in the body, places of deep, old, subtle holding and tightness, kind of like just beginning to move open, you know? And there's so much beauty in that, and also it feels like it takes time. I'm curious about how to relate to that, because I see how my mind can kind of like keep sticking, going back to something I'm calling 'locked,' and really it's opening, but ... yeah.
Rob: Yeah, thank you. This, to me, is a really important question. Let's say two kinds of locks (to oversimplify right now): there's a kind of mental lock. Actually, three kinds of locks: (1) there's a locking in view, which is usually the hardest to even identify. Unless someone says something or you read something that kind of, "Whoa, hold on!", we don't even realize what views we're locked in. So there's that kind of locking, and I've said a little bit about that, but generally, over the years, I've said a lot about that kind of thing. (2) Then there's a locking in a kind of mental territory. So I was, for instance, saying -- was it yesterday or sometime? -- about the second jhāna, for instance: "Hey, don't neglect the really bubbly happiness," especially if that's a little bit alien to your personality -- it's like that's not kind of congruent with your usual shapes your self takes. We can get locked into certain emotional bandwidths or territories, so a person has certain -- whatever it is. But that would be one example.
The locking in views, there are times one has to actually be really ... not aggressive, but vigorous and kind of alert, and really I'm trying to look; I'm really trying to question things, and where I might be locked, and open things up that way. So there's a real sense of "I'm trying to do this." One will never come to the end of that, but the intention can be quite strong, and the action can be quite strong: "Well, I'm going to start reading stuff about this," or whatever it is. The first [looking at/questioning locks in view] can be quite vigorous at times. There will be times when actually that's the most important thing in practice; it's actually the most important thing in one's life. It's this looking at the views I have of all kinds of things -- about what the Dharma is, about what awakening is, about all kinds of things -- that one needs to actually be active and vigorous in one's questioning and exploration. And that might mean a wide exploration. But the intention and the action can be quite strong.
In the second one, what I'm calling a lock into mental territory -- let's say, this example I gave: it's like, "Well, I'm very used to being quite peaceful and equanimous, but the real sort of bubbly happiness is kind of alien to me." Then I would say the middle version there is gentle unlocking. But the unlocking happens just by hanging out in that kind of happiness, for example. I don't need to put too much pressure on the whole situation, or too much pressure on that pattern, on that lock. If something is opening that is expanding my heart-range, and effectively my soul-range, then I want to linger there and let it do its work, rather than just say, "Yep, tasted that one. Tick," because I've experienced it once, and then go back to a kind of equanimity which is supposedly deeper, so it can kind of go under the mask of 'a deepening of practice.'
(3) But the third one, the locks in the body, this is, in a way, a little bit more delicate. So yes, as we practise jhāna, and to the degree, in any formal session, that there's a real kind of absorption and suffusion, etc., those physical locks tend to dissolve. And that dissolution may last after the session. If it's non-habitual -- it was just locked; I've never had that particular lock before -- then it can just go. That was it, and it doesn't come back. If it's a habitual lock, something gets unlocked when there's the jhāna or whatever, and that unlocking can last some degree of time afterwards. I would just be careful not to put a pressure on it, because it may well come back. There's a kind of body karmic knot there that is just a tendency to create that kind of lock, okay?
[1:14:21] We can play with this playing of perception, and see the knot as pīti, and see the knot as happiness. All that's going to help. But I would be really, really careful about two things: one is making too much of a project of unlocking the body. A lot of people get into this. It's really a big deal. If I see that as a long-term project, that's not Dharma to me. I may unlock this or that, or this or that may unlock at different times, through different practices, through different playing with perception, through different states, and that's wonderful, and that's great. But if I kind of get a bit obsessed with that, then that's something else. It's not Dharma any more. (I'm not saying this is what you're doing, Sabra; I'm just giving a general teaching now.) I've shrunken my view of what the Dharma could be into something much smaller, and gotten a bit obsessed about something, and using something as a kind of measuring stick for how I'm doing.
So sometimes, with a lot of practice or a little practice, things that have been habitual may go forever. It's just gone. And sometimes they may go for a little while, and come back. Sometimes they may go for a long while, and come back. But I really have to have my view there quite right. You know, the Dharma offers us much, much, much more than just that kind of unlocking of energy patterns. There was something else I was going to say, but I've forgotten it. Another way of saying all that is just to be very, very light when you're playing with that, and kind of hold it, make sure it's held in a much larger context, and even the way you're playing with it, and playing with perception that way, or the state, to be really quite light about it. How does that sound?
Yogi: Yeah, so helpful. Thank you.
Rob: Okay, good. There was another piece with that. I feel this is really important.
Yogi: [inaudible]
Rob: Yeah, it was something about how to view all that. It's not coming. Sorry. You know, if we go back to this thing we said about playing with perception -- and you can. You get into this enough, and you can. Here's a lock, here's a contraction, here's a pain, whatever it is -- and pain, in energetic terms, is just a contraction of energy -- and you can play with perception, and see it as pīti, and it unlocks, etc. But what's most significant about that is even if it is [that] I look at it and it never comes back, and it's been kind of mildly bugging me for the last ten years, or twenty years, to me, what's more significant about that shift is the dependent arising of perception. And for that coin to drop -- it may well come back; it doesn't take anything away from the insight if it comes back an hour later, ten minutes later. In the long run of things, the fruit of seeing that through playing with perception what I perceive as a lock actually is liberated, is unlocked, understanding then the dependent arising of perception, and therefore the implication for emptiness, that is way more significant than "I've got rid of a discomfort that has been kind of bugging me for twenty years." Do you want to say something, Sabra?
Yogi: Yeah, I think that's kind of the power of what I've been playing with, is really seeing this tendency to look at the problem, and the training in widening back out again, and coming back to the fuller fabric of the energy body, whether or not the lock is unlocking.
Rob: Yeah. So thank you. That's a middle ground as well. If I had to hierarchize these three things, you've got this knot, this lock that has been with me for twenty years, on and off, and I kind of just wish it would go away, and it does -- it goes away forever -- versus what you just said: I've trained the attention and the citta so that when there is some discomfort in the body, I don't have to go there. I can actually put my attention elsewhere and be pretty happy, and there's this lock there. And then the third one, where one actually sees that the lock itself is empty, because when I look at it in a certain way, it dissolves. If I had to put that in hierarchy of order of importance, I would put the disappearing of this bugging thing at the bottom, and then what you said, and then the emptiness one at the top. Just this training -- thank you for saying that -- it's so important. It's really understanding, again: what's the relative significance of different experiences that we have?
But this has everything to do -- and I'll maybe come back to this -- with, why are we practising? What are we practising for? I'll say this again: it's up to us why we practise, you know? It's up to you. You can have any reason why you practise. It's not for me to tell you why to practise. That's for you to find out: why do I want to practise? But the range of possibilities of what we're looking for when we practise is huge. And sometimes what can happen is, a person very consciously just chooses something quite small in terms of the reason they're practising. What also happens, though, is over time, the reasons for practice shrink somehow or other. That's quite interesting as well. Or we've just not been told what fruit there is on offer, and so we're kind of operating under a limited menu of potential. All this is actually really, really key. Does that make sense? I'm going to stop trying to remember what the other thing I was going to say was. [laughs] Does that feel okay for now, Sabra?
Yogi: Definitely.
Rob: Yeah? Okay, good. Is there anyone who hasn't ...? Mikael, yeah. Just to give more people a chance. Yeah, Mikael, please.
Q4: practising changing the perception of unpleasant to pleasant to understand something about emptiness, not just to alleviate this or that pain
Yogi: Thank you. I would like to ask, in relation to this discussion, about the malleability of perception in regards to pain. As you mentioned in some talk before, one can, through this practice, start to slowly notice that actually any vedanā, any experience, can be seen as pleasant -- any vedanā can be seen as pleasant. If there is pain, one can sort of see and -- what's the word you used -- filter out the pleasant out of a mix, and just take that in. Once that really gets going, at least I got really excited about that. It was exhilarating, and "Wow! This is meaningful. This is really deep." [laughs] And some intuition in me says that, well, it's possible to go wrong, or it's possible to overdo this. If one sort of gets first contact with such a malleability of perception in regards to pain, one could get an impression that this is what freedom from suffering is all about, and then starts to apply this with almost any experience, any pain, all the time -- like "Bliss, bliss, bliss, bliss! Yeah! Give me that!" And it's wonderful for a time, for sure, but then an intuition in me says that that is not completely healthy in the long run, and there might be a sort of mistake or a risk of mistake in view. What would you comment on this?
Rob: Yeah, trust your intuition, absolutely, because, to me, if someone hears this idea -- it came up recently on a seminar I did -- someone can hear this idea, and almost get the idea that, "Oh, if I just get really good at that, then I can have a pain-free life," and then they just start trying to do this everywhere. And that would be missing the point. The point is this ability to play with perception, to the degree that something painful becomes something pleasant, for example (or becomes just an empty space, or lots of other possibilities, or becomes the face of the Buddha-nature, or the face of God, or whatever), this ability to play with perception, if I limit it to this pain-to-pleasure thing, and then I think, "Oh, great. What a useful thing!", and then I'm trying to live without pain, that's just -- there are two gifts on offer, and one takes the much, much poorer one, which is freedom from pain.
Now, that sounds like it's Dharma, because Dharma is about reducing suffering and all that. No. The lesson from it, the potential lesson from it -- and it will have to sit within a context of other teachings on emptiness, and other kinds of playing with perception, and all that stuff -- is that perception is malleable, and is that nothing exists as anything in particular. A thing is not this or that or any thing independent of the way of looking. Eventually, I see that in lots of different ways, to lots of different depths and degrees, through lots of different directions, and that starts telling me about the emptiness of all phenomena. No phenomenon whatsoever is fundamentally existent as any thing in itself. It is this or that dependent on the way of looking.
That is a knowledge, and a knowledge that can come in not just intellectually -- into the heart. And then the knowledge that everything is radically empty like that, to me, liberates in a much grander way. It liberates independent of this pain or that pain. It liberates in relation to the whole of existence and all phenomena. I'd say even more important, it brings a kind of unspeakable joy, and wonder, and sense of mystery and grace into the whole fabric of existence at a very deep level. To me, that's the point, rather than, "Now I'm just really good at -- hopefully I can get to the end of my life without any pain." [laughter] It just seems a little narrow to me. Yeah, you can use that occasionally when things are rough, but that's not the point. The point is more, what's it telling me? If I just experience it once or twice, it will be like, "Woo, okay." But as I said, if I start to experience it lots of different ways, at some point, or to some degree, the coin drops about the nature of existence itself, about the nature of things, the way things are, the true nature of things, the emptiness, the suchness of phenomena. And knowing that liberates in a much broader and deeper way, rather than this or that instance. I can still have this pain or that whatever, but it liberates in relation to life and death, and it brings, I would say, a wonder and a sense of sacredness that's almost difficult to put into words, the level at which one ... And to me, that's the point.
Anyway, just like the mastery thing, no one's going to be able to do that all the time. The Buddha was in plenty of pain in his old age, and it was only a certain kind of meditation that would release him from the perceptions of pain, etc. I can say I'm struggling with pain quite a lot at times. So again, it's like, what's significant? What's not? So your intuition is spot on there. What's the real gift here? It's much vaster in scale, you know, than just that kind of neat trick that we can do that helps us feel better. Yeah?
Yogi: Thank you.
Rob: Yeah, okay. Maybe one more. Did you have something, Jason? Oh, is there anyone else? Jason is happy to give up his ... Anyone else?
Q5: whether some locks in the body might benefit from lifestyle changes; working with locks that may or may not express themselves physically
Yogi: Okay. So on the issue of locks in the body, I think for better and worse, I've been exposed to some teaching that has really emphasized that, and maybe overemphasized that, and for periods of my practice I have overemphasized that -- unlocking things, and opening somatic blocks. It's gotten much gentler, and it has been a concept that's been present here a lot, but only insofar as it prevents the flow of energy that would allow pīti and jhāna states. So I'm glad about that. The thing I was curious to ask you about is related to something I talked to Robert about earlier today, which was, in the long-term big picture, do you see those as things that could suggest certain, like, life changes, or lifestyle changes, outside of practice, in order to work with or relieve one of them?
Rob: Do the locks suggest that it might be a good idea to do certain lifestyle changes?
Yogi: Yeah.
Rob: Some of them might, yeah. I used to have, for many years, a kind of cramping of the lower intestine, and it was just a very common, uncomfortable sensation. It felt like something was locking there. You know, very, very regular visitor in my meditation practice, for years and years and years. I learnt a lot about that, about clinging, and perception, and letting go and everything, for which I'm really, really grateful. It became -- what was, you know, not terrible, but an ongoing sort of difficulty, was something that I learnt a lot from. In hindsight, it was also, you know, I found that when I eventually found -- because I had ulcerative colitis and Crohn's -- when I found a certain kind of probiotic and started taking that, that eased a lot. So, yes.
Yogi: I think I was speaking more about, like -- well, what we talked about was kind of suppressed desire, or things that I might want that I'm not seeing through, or things that I might say that I'm not saying -- that kind of stuff.
Rob: Okay. But something like that may or may not express itself as a lock in the body. In other words, what often happens is someone suppresses their desire, or doesn't see a project through that they want, and there's no sense of anything being particularly locked in the body. What's actually happening in the body is they're not allowing energy to build up in the body. So they don't particularly experience a sort of great holding/contraction thing. I don't know about using that as an indicator of something psychological necessarily. At a very subtle level -- and we'll come back to this; we've already touched on it -- the presence of the perception of a lock in any moment, or a contraction in the body, is an indicator, at a very subtle level, that there's aversion present in the mind (subtle aversion). But that's more to do, again, with dependent arising and insight practices that can then, when I release that aversion, lo and behold, the sense of the lock dissolves.
[1:32:57] So some of these more -- let's say, I don't know what you'd call them -- personality locks or stuff like that, they may or may not express themselves in long-term physical stuff. And sometimes with people, they do, very clearly, and it may or may not be related to these larger issues. And sometimes they don't really express at all, or in any noticeable way. And sometimes they express, but in a way that's not obvious to that person, even when they've practised a lot with the energy body, but may be obvious to someone else who's a bit more sensitive to that. A person doesn't realize they hold in a certain way, and that may be to do with -- yeah, so more psychological: they hold in relation to life, or in relationship with someone. Or in relation to their self-expression, they're just holding back. And sometimes it's sensible to someone else, but they have no notion of it at all, because it's actually quite subtle, and there's no discomfort with it. Sometimes the thing about these more severe locks, there's discomfort, and discomfort is like waving a red flag, saying, "Something's wrong here!" So there can be the whole range there, really.
I think what's more important here is that if you look at your life and you feel like, "Ungh. I am kind of squashing my libido" -- in the larger sense of libido -- "in a certain way, or I'm dampening my desire, or I'm in some way inhibiting either my desire to accumulate and burn, or my desire to follow through, or whatever," that's extremely significant, I would say. Massively significant. All that can hide under a nice Buddhist facade of well-behaved equanimous yogi who lets go a lot very well, you know? "Maybe you should be a teacher." [laughter] So this is a really, really important point, I would say, and to take that up as an investigation. Then you can see, "Okay, how much are these physical locks really trustworthy as indicators of the relationship where that is?"
But probably, if that's the kind of thing you're talking about, long-term projects and stuff, my guess is that the physical manifestations will only be partially helpful as indicators. There's a bigger thing going on, and your job will be to investigate that. Going back to what we said, in terms of the views as well -- what views are operating? In terms of those one, two, three that I said earlier, what views am I locked into? Maybe a view about desire. Maybe a view about self. Maybe a view about Buddhist practice. It could be all kinds of things; nothing to do with Buddhism, but the views. The other thing might be, the second one, it might be an emotional lock -- that this territory of actually sitting with a really strong desire, and everything I talked about the other day, if it's really strong, it will burn, and a lot of people say, "I don't like burning. There's a danger that I won't get that. I'll be frustrated. I'll fail. People will think this, or I'll think this," or whatever it is, "or I just cannot tolerate that burning. I cannot tolerate that much desire." It's uncomfortable, or it can be uncomfortable sometimes.
So it might be I just have kind of shut the door on that emotional territory. And again, the boundary between what's emotional and what's physical, what's emotional and what's energetic, there's not a clear boundary there. But again, it might be that a person just, "I cannot tolerate that much energy in my being." So there are a lot of things here. I think it's immensely important. And what does it mean to be a liberated human being? What does it mean in relation to this? Am I really liberated if I can't actually feel any desire, or I can't follow through on a desire? If my only option is to let go, is that really liberation? (You're not saying that, but it's a larger question.) So to me, it's really, really important. The investigation of all that is probably not something that's -- it depends how long this has been around, but it's probably not something that happens, "Ah! I've got it now!" There may be long-term habits here of thinking, of view, of energetics, of emotional territory -- all kinds of things, you know? So it may take a while. It may involve all kinds of explorations, from all different angles and levels and all that. But I think it's hugely important. I don't know, does that ...?
Yogi: Yeah, totally.
Rob: And again, you could decide to see that as an investigation that's outside of Dharma, or you can expand your view of what Dharma is, and that becomes an investigation that's really at the core of Dharma. In a way, that's up to you; it doesn't really matter. There are certainly ways of doing it both ways, in or out. Yeah? So I think it's very important.
Yogi: Thanks.
Q6: happiness and other jhāna factors coming up outside of formal sessions
Rob: Okay. I'm not sure whether to read these notes. Someone's written -- it's anonymous. I don't know if that was intentional or not, but it says: "You don't even need the jhāna to be happy. I realized this today, and it totally blew my mind. Just wanted to share that." Yeah! That's totally right. [laughter] I'm just wondering if I've missed something here, or if the person wants to say a bit more. Yeah, please.
Yogi: I was in a very happy mode when I wrote it. [laughter]
Rob: Yeah! Great. Two things... Go ahead. Yeah, thanks, with the mic.
Yogi: I was in a very happy mode when I wrote it, and there was a relief coming from it.
Rob: Yeah, good. So this is what I wondered. This is really important. So two things here. One is that as we practise the jhānas more, the jhāna factors -- like pīti and sukha, happiness -- can come up outside of a formal session very, very strongly. And sometimes it's very obvious to see the connection with, for example, a sitting we've just had: we get up, and we're in the lunch queue, and we're just overflowing with happiness. But sometimes it seems almost a bit random. It's just like, "It wasn't going so well, and then suddenly there's this eruption of happiness." So that's all very normal. Yeah, the jhāna factor of sukha can come up, even very strongly, outside of an actual jhāna, outside of the total absorption in it.
There is still an important difference between absorbing into a jhāna, and everything really collected, and the happiness. But the happiness itself is also really a treasure, yeah? To gather it more, we marinate in it, and sit in it, but this is really great. But then, also, as you said, it was a relief, because sometimes, again, so much can happen. We say, "This is the goal, and there are these stages, and there are eight of them, and then there's this idea of mastery," and it's so easy for the self-measuring and the critic and all that to come in, and then it's all very tight. Then we realize, "Oh, actually, it doesn't need to be so black and white, 'Have I got it? Have I not?' It can come up anywhere." And that takes some pressure off. So that's great.
And then, thirdly -- which isn't what you were saying, but -- yeah, it should be obvious: there are plenty of people who experience happiness in the world who have never heard the word jhāna and never had jhāna. So happiness is just -- it wasn't what you were saying, Hannah, but we should realize that, too, that we're not saying here that, "No one who hasn't experienced a jhāna can ever experience happiness." No. But there is something about the degree of jhānic happiness that is sometimes there that is pretty extraordinary. But that, as you've found, can come off the cushion. We say, "I've never been this sort of happy!" So all that is great.
And on that note, I'll just read this. I don't know, again. Depending on how your hindrances are doing, and how your papañca is doing and all that, right now ... Should I read this? Leave it? I'll leave it. No? Did someone say no? Okay. [laughter] Can you sign something that you take responsibility for your ...? [laughter]
"Dear Rob, in second, I heard the central heating as happiness, and that pretty much blew the roof off." Again, it's playing with perception, or a perception was played with just by being in the jhāna. "More joy than I have ever felt, ever. Then I came out of third jhāna" -- this is someone who's spent a lot of time working on this stuff in the past, so it's not their first jhāna retreat -- "to walk, and everyone seemed like these radiant, translucent Buddhas." Which is what you are, by the way. [laughter] "Wow!" So it doesn't sound like there's a question there, but there's some sharing.
Okay. We should probably end, because my interviews are at seven. Let's just have a bit of quiet together.
[silence]
Okay, thank you, everybody, and time for tea.
