Transcription
Before we start today, a request, actually. So you may or may not have realized, but we're not alone at Gaia House, in terms of there are other retreatants here. There are people on personal retreat and people on work retreat. There's been a request to please not talk outside of the Q & A period and interviews -- I don't know what exactly is happening -- or in your work periods or something. So for their sake, who naturally expected to come on a silent retreat, but also for your sake, this idea of actually letting things build, letting the energies build. When there's happiness, and of course, appreciation, very natural, human, you want to share that or talk. And that's important, of course. It's an important part of being human. But in this practice, we're also wanting to let the energies build, and not squander them so much. There will be a chance to talk at the end, share time together verbally at the end of the retreat. But unless it's talking with each other about the work, and what needs doing right then, about whatever yogi job you're doing, just to repeat the initial agreement to sustain silence together.
And can you feel together in that silence? Do I need to speak and be heard and exchange that to feel connected? One of the opportunities, as I think already somehow came up in a Q & A, as a retreat gets longer, we get more sensitive, and part of the gift of that sensitivity is that we can feel each other more deeply, more widely, more completely, more openly and sensitively, and we don't need to talk, necessarily. Don't even need to talk to someone, or hear their story, or hear whatever to sense how they're doing, and their personhood, and the particular flavours of their being, and to sense that connection, and the way one can feel very connected across space without all that. So I don't know the details, but the other resident teacher has obviously heard from some yogis or encountered something, so there's a request to all of us to uphold, revisit that commitment together, and keep that. And if it feels like, "Oh, but it's such a nice connection," then I invite you to see, to remind yourself that you can have that verbal connection at the end of the retreat with each other, and to see: how connected can you feel without words?
And it's to do with the same qualities, really, that we're bringing -- if you want to feel connected -- that we're bringing to this kind of practice anyway, and to me, that are part of what we bring to any practice: sensitivity, openness, receptivity, attunement, etc. It's all the same thing. And if a certain period is a time when you don't want to do that, then you just shift the balance of the attention. So if you are feeling like, yeah, you're really enjoying and appreciating each other and the connection, let that be more prominent: I'm washing dishes and whatever, and there can be the eye contact and smiling, if you want, without the expectation that it comes back. But the emphasis on the attention is more on that sense of connection, and appreciating it, and feeling it with the whole body, and resonating with it. You can get exquisitely sensitive. Some of you know this on long retreat. You might be sitting right here at the front, and -- I don't know how many yards it is to the back of the hall -- someone comes in quietly, and you know who it is. How does that happen? If I'm just yap, yap, yapping all the time, I won't develop that kind of sensitivity.
So you can play with the balance of attention, in terms of, if I want that connection, then I can be a little more open. If I'm more inner, maybe I'm working with my primary nimitta, maybe I'm processing something inside, maybe I just need to collect my mind and be mindful, whatever it is, then the balance is more inside. Again, it's just context. It's never the case that we want never to talk to anyone, although the Buddha seemed to recommend that almost as a preference for his monks and nuns. But we want to have this freedom and this capacity to do things differently at different times. Really, really important -- part of expanding our range and expanding our freedom. Yeah? So we can just revisit that together. Okay? Good.
Okay, so I've got just a few questions from people, and we can take some verbal ones, live ones. [to someone nearby] I have a question. Is this from you? [laughs] Okay. Is there anything anyone would like to ask?
Q1: working with self-doubt around desire
Yogi: So last night before sleeping, I had a vitakka and vicāra attack, which is a great time to have right before you go to sleep. [laughs] But really appreciating the whole jhāna system -- kind of a bunch of things you said all came into order, and just really feeling like, "This thing is really brilliant." Particularly I've been struck by when you said the most important thing about the jhānas is working towards a goal, and "Who actually believes me?" And I raised my hand, and then as soon as I raised my hand, I was like, "If Rob asked me why, I would have no idea." [Rob and yogi laugh] It was just this instinctual hand-raising. As it all came together last night -- it was long and extended, but the short of it is, basically, the Buddha setting up "work towards a goal, but the goal necessitates that you let go of clinging and aversion, and even delusion, and get more and more and more subtle," so all the ways that you would naturally go towards a goal, you're asked to let go of in order to complete that goal. And then along the way, you make the world over and over and over again through dependent origination, and you see that, either through hindrances, or you create a hell realm, or through beauty. And I was like ... mind blown.
But the thing that I'm grappling with, after you gave that talk about desire, it struck me so deep, I actually went to my room, and I just wept for an hour. I haven't ever had that kind of response on retreat. I was, like, disturbed -- not in necessarily a bad way, but in this deep in my belly kind of way, and went through a whole process. And then, from one way of looking, I can see it as a sort of self-doubt hindrance attack, but this other way of looking, it's like, I felt how important intention and desire is. I mean, I've been listening to you say it for years, like "Desire is a maker of worlds," and I'm like, "Yeah!" But then I got it, and I was like, "Oh." [Rob and yogi laugh] And that's really where I'm struggling, with, like, I can see if I looked at it one way, it's amazing -- like, what can I do? But I'm actually just having this response of the gravity of, like, can I live up to my desire, and stick with that intention? Being on this retreat, it's been so beautiful to have the intentions so strongly held, and then I leave, and it's a world where literally your attention and your desire is being grabbed at everywhere. So yeah, I'm just really wondering if there are words around the gravity of intention and grappling with that.
Rob: Thank you, Nicole. I just want to try and make sure I understand. So you mean in your life. The question is really about: now that I've seen how important it is to kind of honour my desire, in the deepest sense of the word 'honour,' and to deeply honour my deepest desires, and I see how difficult that is to do in the world with different things pulling, what would support that? Is that what you're asking?
Yogi: Yeah. I think there's just a lot of self-doubt coming, deep-rooted. My desire is strong, and deep, and it's fast. It's like, yes, I desire the jhānas, but way more than the jhānas, and it's from mystery and beauty and these things that -- do I even know the definition or the depth of which they go? No, I don't. And yet, seeing how intention is going to make my life, I'm just feeling like ... I want it, and can I do that? And there's just pain around that.
Rob: So the pain is around not knowing whether you can, and the self-doubt with it?
Yogi: Yeah, feeling the desire and not knowing.
Rob: I don't know you that well, but to the degree that I know you, it seems like you have done that pretty well in your life so far. But I don't know if you would agree with that. Like I said, I don't know you that well yet.
Yogi: Yeah, I guess I can see both. There are times that I've done it very well, and times that I've failed, and I think the times when it fails are very painful. And not so much the not getting the thing, but seeing how I've let intentions fray.
Rob: Yeah, yeah. Okay. There's so much to say about this, but I think what you just said is maybe the key thing: rather than get into "I failed" or "I didn't fail," it's like, "What just happened there?" And "what just happened there" might be over the last ten years with a certain desire, or it might be in one interaction: "I had a certain desire in a certain situation. Whoa. I just got completely sidetracked, or blocked, or afraid, or inhibited, or lost my risk-taking capability." So to me, I wonder, from what you're saying, whether the most important thing -- one of the most important things -- is learning from when you feel like you haven't lived up to that.
Maybe one of the most important things is actually learning from when something feels like you haven't lived up to that, you know? What exactly just happened? Was it fear? Was it ...? And then fear of what, you know? What kind of thoughts? What was I believing? Inhibition? Desire has a lot to do with risk-taking as well. How willing am I to feel a fear, and just to take a risk? And that could be a long-term vision risk, or it could be something in the moment, depending on the whole setup of the situation, you know?
So on a big scale, I can think of several junctures in my life where things were -- I mean, I shared one about going to do music. Things were really looking very promising from a certain social perspective, in a certain realm, and just went to do something where it was like, "What are you doing?" That's a kind of long-term risk thing. Or it could be very much in the moment that one's afraid of taking certain risks. But to identify what just happened, if you really feel like, "Oh, I got lost there. Something happened, and I didn't live up to my intentions."
So that's one thing. Another thing to pull out from what you said is this business of "I don't quite know even what I'm desiring." To me, that's okay. And you're familiar with the soulmaking teachings. That would actually go with the eros. Eros will create and discover beyonds, some of which are completely nebulous, in terms of I just have a sense of gorgeous, luminous divinities that I don't quite -- I couldn't articulate them; I can't even differentiate them in my sense of them, and that's pulling me, and that's completely okay. But on the way to that, it wants to translate into actual, practical action. In other words, a full spectrum of desire, a full spectrum of eros, has both very clear choices that it's asking me to make -- here and now, perhaps, or later -- and kind of more nebulous ones later on. Does that make sense? And that whole thing is part of the fullness of it.
There's also such a thing as -- it's, to me, worth desiring, and worth longing for, and worth risking something that may well not pay off, that you may well not ever get. So one checks. That's part of the whole mix as well: "Is it okay not to get this thing, and yet still to give myself completely to it?" Again, if we think imaginally, then if there's desire and eros for something, there will be, in that whole constellation, an image or images associated with that very desire -- the angel who wants that, the self that's desiring. Out of the very fire of the desire and the eros, there should constellate other images which want you to move towards that, or something that beckons you from what it is that you love and long for. Does that make sense? And they can take very potent imaginal forms, so let them do that as well.
And then it relates to someone else's question as well: if you really want certain things in life, you're going to piss some people off, and disappoint some people, and people will consider you selfish or this or that, or people will consider you maybe -- depending on what you want, some people will consider you, "Why is she less available? Why is she this or that for me, for them?", whatever. And that's also part of what you have to deal with. You can't satisfy everyone. So depending on your kind of -- I don't know what to call it -- relational empathic sensitivity, which you may have to quite a degree, you're actually going to feel the pain of that quite a lot, and very easy for you to feel guilty and feel like you have to take care of this person or that person, or why you're not available, or why you're choosing to do this rather than that. So that's a way, often, that deep, strong desires get sidetracked, that we feel beholden, in a way, to explain ourselves, or to give people, or this or that, something else, what they want. So it's hard. It's hard to be in the world, and it's even harder when people don't really understand what it is you're desiring, or they don't value it, or they think it's not that worthwhile or whatever, or they don't think you'll be able to get it -- lots of things, you know?
So that's quite hard. Someone who's more kind of -- I don't know what the word is -- emotionally less sensitive, emotionally less pulled on in relationship by others' needs and wishes and pain, actually has an easier time with that. I don't know -- is any of this addressing what you're ...?
Yogi: Yeah, it is.
Rob: We could probably talk all day and night about it because it's a huge subject. Is there any more you want to say?
Yogi: No, I think that's it.
Rob: Okay. Then one more thing. So it sounds like what happened was potent, and in that potency, again, there are lots of different things going on. So one of the things that was going on was this self-doubt, you know? But I would wager there were lots of other things going on, and some of them were probably very beautiful, and probably very empowering. This ability -- again, same deal -- it's like, okay, all this is going on; you could actually visit every frequency and emotion that had been going on in there. But some of them, when you get to them, will be very potentially empowering, like I said. So here's a self-doubt. Obviously that's potentially disempowering. It needs attention, partly for that very reason. I need to understand it.
But there might be within it, just for example: here's this thing I really, really want, and I feel that wanting, and in that wanting -- another way of saying it is, here's this thing I'm devoted to, and that devotion, or this devotion and this longing, I can feel energetically. I can feel it emotionally and energetically. And that's something that I can really sit with -- even if what I want is actually vague, I'm not yet clear, but the fire of it is clear, and the energy of it is clear, and the devotion in it is clear. So rather than worrying too much about getting the clarity right now about what the object is, I can come back and be with my sense of devotion, which I might even get -- at first it feels like it's somewhere in the mass of burning and confused, you know; somewhere in there is my devotion. And when I sit with my devotion, it naturally samādhifies the being around it. It harmonizes and energizes, and I can feel that uprightness. The longer I sit with that, with that uprightness and that sense of devotion, and I let it shape my energy body -- and that's a kind of prayer, even though I'm not clear exactly what I'm praying to -- it does something to the body and the psyche, regularly sitting in that and feeling one's alignment. So you can do that for a long time. You can do that for a short time. But it will do something.
Yogi: Yeah, that's a bit what happened. It was useful to look for the hindrance in it, and then sort of tend to that, which I did by devoting this retreat to a teacher that I mentor who suffers from self-doubt a lot, and so I sort of bring her into the sits, especially when that comes up, and for that part of it, use that, and then a kind of fire of devotion. I was aware that, once that was taken care of, there was actually -- it was vague, but a sense of what I was longing for, at least just in kind of the energy body, and that really kicked the practice into another gear the next day after that.
Rob: Good.
Yogi: But it kind of came back last night as the sort of system of jhānas, and what we're doing, and maybe why you said that thing about why working towards a goal is so important. So it wobbles.
Rob: What's wobbling?
Yogi: Going between kind of feeling overwhelmed by the power of that desire, and "Can I meet it?", and just feeling the power of the desire. It kind of wobbles back and forth.
Rob: Yeah. And, you know, again, if we just talk about imaginal practice, the very doubt, and wobble, and fear, and whatever it is, if I let myself go into that, out of that will come an image, potentially: the one who, in relation to what they love most deeply and long for, feels very unsure of themselves. The dukkha of that can -- you have to go into it, though; you're not trying to pacify it, or talk your way, or reassure it. You're actually letting that constellate as an image, yeah? So it might get clear what I'm desiring, but it also gets clear just the desire itself, and I begin to trust that more and more, let that empower the whole being, yeah? Okay. Great. Yeah, we could talk a lot more, but that's good.
Some other people had their hands up earlier. Victor, yeah, please.
Q2: different meanings and levels of equanimity
Yogi: I wanted to tease out the term 'equanimity.' I mean, you've mentioned it a few times, and I think you said the ordinary use in English of 'equanimity' doesn't quite cover what happens in jhāna states. I was struck by how, from what I gather, Bhikkhu Anālayo uses the term 'equipoise' as the translation of upekkhā, and I think because he says equanimity, as a term, can have a dampening effect. Thoughts?
Rob: Yeah, thank you. I'm going to talk more about equanimity tomorrow, but we can say a few things now. Equanimity, as a term in English -- I'm not sure if I even heard it before Buddhist sort of speak. But what's called the 'near enemy' in Dharma of equanimity is indifference. So that may be what Anālayo is pointing to -- something that can look like equanimity, but actually it's a little bit ...
Yogi: Actually, I think he said it in the context that pleasure could be seen in the context of, "Well, there's pleasure here, but dukkha somewhere else," so it takes the brightness off, the term 'equanimity,' compared to 'equipoise,' which is sort of like a balanced stance.
Rob: Yeah, okay. I'm really happy with the word equipoise. I'm not sure about the word equanimity. Anima is -- equal soul, equal animation is probably what it comes from, so 'equal' what -- passion? Does that take the brightness off, or does it not take the brightness off? Equanimity is actually -- we can talk about it very briefly, or we can talk really, really a lot about it, and once we start inquiring into it, it's actually quite complex. I was trying to remember ... I think upekkhā, I think there's somewhere or other where I trace the word. Now I can't remember. I think, in Sanskrit, upekṣā, and the īkṣā, upa + īkṣā, and I think that's to do -- 'equal seeing,' so 'seeing things equally.' You could say it's equally poised in the sense that there's a balance between this and that, and even between pain and pleasure. So at one level, yeah, that would be a good translation. Here I perceive pleasure, here I perceive dukkha or whatever, and the being is equipoised -- it's not leaning towards the pleasure, or away from the dukkha. At one level, yeah, that would be a good word -- balance of mind, something like that. And that's good at a certain level. That's really fine at a certain level.
I'm just wondering whether I should talk about it now, or wait till tomorrow.
Yogi: Oh, I'm happy for you to wait.
Rob: Yeah? Let's see.
Yogi: I mean, for me, the bigger picture is the effect of the term 'equanimity' in Buddhist communities in relation to the climate issues. That's the background.
Rob: Yeah, thank you. Yeah. I don't actually use the term much. I actually think equanimity is a bit of a -- it doesn't really exist, which I'll explain, I hope. But the other thing is exactly because of that -- because it very easily becomes a shadow for Buddhists, so that equanimity in relation to something like climate change very easily goes to a kind of indifference, or to whatever -- whatever social injustice, racial injustice. Could be anything. So we have to be really careful. Now, of course we all teach that, that the near enemy of equanimity is indifference. It's still there as a really dangerous edge.
Maybe say this for now: there's one level of equanimity, as I said, which is a kind of important but more superficial level. So when the Buddha talks about equanimity in terms of the eight worldly conditions -- have you heard that? There's praise/blame, success/failure, gain/loss, and pleasure/pain. And then we could put this other translation, equipoise. And so, at this superficial level of understanding, a good practitioner views those things, is kind of indifferent (in the best sense of the word) between [them] -- doesn't mind if it's success or failure; doesn't mind if it's gain or loss; doesn't mind if it's praise or blame, at one level. Of course, we can refine that a little bit and say, even with relation to climate change, "Yes, I care," and this is how it should be, equanimity in the context of the brahmavihāras, equanimity in the context of really caring, passionately, really with a lot of mettā, with a lot of compassion for what's happening in the world, and the suffering that something like climate change is already delivering for so many people. There is the compassion, ideally. There is the mettā. There should also be the engagement as well. And it might be that the ship is sinking, and that's where the equanimity comes in, that one isn't going to be incapacitated in one's efforts, or totally incapacitated by grief, and disempowered by grief or worry or fear. That's the best sense of equanimity at that level. Does that make sense?
Then there's a whole other level of equanimity, which I think maybe I'll speak about tomorrow, and that has more to do with this other possible etymology, upa + īkṣā in Sanskrit, and the īkṣā is 'seeing things equally.' But we're getting into equanimity as we get into the third jhāna, which we already talked about, and then more in the fourth jhāna, and then as we relate to insight. I'll say it very briefly. Let's take this polarity, pleasure and pain, or pleasant and unpleasant. In a way, I've already said this. So the usual reaction to the pleasant is to want it, and to try and hold it, and to try and grasp it, and try and bring it towards me, and the usual reaction to the unpleasant is to try and push it away, right? That push and pull of grasping and aversion, to the degree that they are present in the consciousness at any moment is the degree to which equanimity is not present. You could define it that way. Does that make sense?
So as I practise, in one way or another, letting go in the moment -- this is not a way to live one's life; it's completely not a way to live one's life. It's a practice in the moment of letting go of any pushing away of anything that I notice, at any level, in the moment, and letting go or calming any pulling towards me or hanging on, at any level, in the moment. If I just practise that (and there are lots of different ways of doing that), then I notice there's a calming in the being, and that calming is part of what equanimity is and looks like. But it doesn't stop there. If I keep doing it, I will then begin to notice that the very perception -- which may be the īkṣā, the eyes -- the seeing of the pleasant and unpleasant begins to change. The very sense of them begins to change, and what's unpleasant becomes less unpleasant, and what's pleasant may, for a little while, get more pleasant, and then it goes towards more neutral until, in the end, everything becomes a kind of neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant vedanā. But it doesn't stop there either. It goes even deeper, and if I keep doing this and keep doing this, the actual sensation begins to disappear. So you're letting go -- at really, really, more and more deep and subtle levels, we're letting go of push-pull, letting go of push-pull, letting go of push-pull. So it's gone way beyond a state of calmness in response to, or a state of okayness in response to pleasure and pain. It's actually effecting or fabricating the very perceptions of pleasure and pain. Is this making sense?
Yogi: Yeah.
Yogi 2: Theoretically.
Rob: Vaguely? Theoretically? Yeah. These are practices. And I can say this a thousand times: until you actually know how to practise this, put it into practice, and see it for yourself -- and there's a whole range here. So eventually what happens is not just pleasure and pain disappear, but the very sensations disappear, and then actually the very world disappears. Self disappears, world disappears, da-da-da-da. Time disappears. In that state, we're not talking about equanimity in relation to anything that's pleasant or unpleasant, but it's a deep level of equanimity. That's partly why I think equanimity is actually a thing that doesn't exist, because by the time you've got real equanimity, there's nothing to be equanimous about.
But anyway. Equanimity is a big subject, it's complex, and it's very much interwoven with the territory we'll get on to as we go on to the fourth jhāna and the other jhānas, and how that meets with insight. But in terms of what you're saying about climate change -- and I know what a concern that is for you, and how passionate and dedicated you are, and also living in Australia, where there's really not that much consciousness, it seems, about it at the moment -- it's really, really important that we don't use (and it could be in any spiritual tradition) certain teachings to brush over or hide our noblest responses, etc.
Yogi: Good. Thanks.
Rob: Okay? Yeah. Is that Monica at the back? Please, yeah.
Q3: the relationship of seclusion from the hindrances and the quietening of pushing and pulling; the fabricated nature of desire
Yogi: Thank you, Rob, for mentioning the push and pull, which you also spoke about when you described the third jhāna. When you mentioned in the third jhāna, you mentioned something like a peacefulness that arises from quietening the push and pull. And I have a question regarding that, because if I remember correctly, when you read the description of the first jhāna, it was something in the lines of "secluded from the hindrances." So I was under the impression that we were done with the push and pull in the first jhāna already, because greed and aversion weren't present any more, which are the push and pull. So if we're already secluded from the hindrances, where is this push and pull coming from? I'm confused.
Rob: Yeah, thank you. It's really important. Yeah, it depends. I use the word 'clinging,' and 'push and pull' is just another word for clinging, for me. But I use that word in a very elastic way, so that there are very obvious manifestations of clinging -- very obvious manifestations, like the hindrances, for instance -- but that's really just one level, okay? And as you say, when we let go of the hindrances, a certain amount of clinging, a certain amount of push-pull, has gone from our experience, but it's enough that then the being, the energy body and the being, feel really good. First jhāna kind of arises.
But as I said, I use that word as having a range of depths and subtlety that ... I don't know, maybe in the Dharma world, there are a lot of teachings that don't use that word so much, so it stays like quite a gross thing: either there is clinging, or there isn't, and then that often goes with teachings like "either there is a self, the self was there, or it's not." But I view all these words -- self, and clinging, and all of that -- as spectra, and they go really, really, really subtle, so that by the time we get to the third or fourth jhāna, the amount of push and pull is way less, you know? So let's say that. But even there -- and I'll repeat this as we get into more territory -- it doesn't stop there. There's really, really subtle clinging and push-pull even in the fourth jhāna. Now, I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't agree, but that's how I use those words. How does that sound for now?
Yogi: Yeah, I understand. So it's really the degree of push and pull, where in the spectrum we are in the push and pull that goes [to] more and more subtle levels.
Rob: Yeah, yeah. And in a way, you could say, one way of understanding what's happening in the jhānas is that we're just letting go of clinging at a deeper level or to more refined things that we hadn't even [considered]: "How do you cling to consciousness, or ...?" So we tend to think of clinging, as I said, in English, and in a lot of Dharma, it refers to something that's actually quite gross: clinging, craving, and all that. But I really mean them as open-ended terms. Let's just see where the limit is. And it's the very (A) stillness and subtlety of the attention that allows us to see where that clinging is more subtly, but (B) it's also framing the teachings, from the beginning, in a way that doesn't define things in a limited way. So if I define clinging as something gross, then I'm not going to look for any more subtle clinging. But if I define it in this more open way, right from the beginning, then it's a question of, "Oh, maybe there's more. I have to get still and sensitive." So I have to get down to a certain level of very little clinging to see when there's even less. Does that make sense?
So that's the kind of way I like to present things. That whole process, that whole investigation of letting go of more and more clinging, is what I would call an insight investigation. Like I said, any insight way of looking, which means any insight practice as I would frame it and teach it, is doing just that. In one way or another, that's the primary thing it's doing. It may look like it's doing something very different, but that's primarily what it's doing. And then, at certain points, you may just be able to follow the same practice into deeper and deeper or more and more subtle levels of clinging, deeper and deeper letting go, or you may need to kind of tweak the practice a little bit so that you can get into the subtler and subtler levels of letting go. The way we're practising jhāna at the moment is we're not really thinking so much about letting go of clinging and "Where's the clinging?" There is a way -- and I hope to get to it on this retreat -- there is a way of practising jhāna where that's actually how you move from one jhāna to another: you identify the clinging and you let go, and let go, and that takes you to another level. But at the moment, that's not really how we're approaching things. We're approaching more through just getting into it, letting it ripen, enjoying it, opening to it. So in a way, we're approaching more just trusting the samādhi intention of enjoying and getting into something, and trusting that will naturally ripen in this process.
So when I mentioned the other day that the equanimity of the third jhāna arises from attenuating the push-pull, in a way, that's more just a, "Let's understand kind of technically what's really happening here." For most of you at this point, the methodology to get to the third jhāna is actually more through just get into the second jhāna and really get satisfied. Now, we could see that satisfaction as "Because I'm satisfied, I don't need to push-pull so much any more." So it's a deep level of letting go of push-pull, but it's not the end. There's more. It gets subtler than that. So that point was more just a kind of, yeah, wanting to be really precise about understanding things, and trying to weave things together in terms of the understanding; less about the practice. Does that make sense? Okay. Good.
Yogi: Thank you.
Rob: Yes, you're welcome. Oh, is there more?
Yogi: Since I have the microphone ...
Rob: [laughs] Okay, yeah, sure.
Yogi: I don't know if it's really a question or a comment, but I benefit from having the microphone, because I already had this in my mind to ask. It's following up from what Nicole was commenting on -- desire. I have been reflecting on this over the years. In some of your talks, where you ask, "What do you really want? What do you want?" And the other day, "What's your deepest desire? What's your calling?" And the question that came to my mind was about the fabricated nature of desire, because as I reflect on my own desire, it has evolved over time, since I first started to practise, over the years, to a large degree influenced by what I've been exposed to, and accounts of great enlightened beings, and great masters, and your own accounts. And you said something to that yesterday when you said something like, "It depends what you've been exposed to." I don't see my notes right now, but I'm paraphrasing. So when I ask myself that question, "What am I desiring?", it's not like there is something there that is my desire, that I'm trying to discover or get to, but that it is fabricated, that I am creating my desire. I don't know if it's so much of a question, but is there anything you would say to that?
Rob: I would, and in fact, somehow you've brought it up with me before, and so in the last series of talks that I recorded at home, I spent about half an hour answering that. It's there somewhere. Don't ask me which talk it's in -- somewhere in forty-five hours of ... [laughter] You'll find it at some point, I guess![1] But just to say something quickly now. Yeah, so, again, it a little bit relates to what Marco was asking yesterday. We could say desire is fabricated. But if our understanding of that (or if we're holding that as a view) ends up disempowering our desire -- I say, "Well, it's all fabricated, so I'll just throw it ..." -- that's not a very helpful view. At other times, regarding my desire for this or that as fabricated is really skilful, because it helps me let go of what's probably a desire that's just going to maybe give me a little sugar hit, but is actually miserable. So are many of our desires, or all desires -- what desires are fabricated? Yeah. Gosh, can you get through a day out there without being assaulted by a million advertisements? And then whatever culture you move in tells you -- as you said, you get exposed to not even stories; it's just like how people walk, or how people talk, or how people present their emotional range. We're barraged by that all through.
So just to say for now: yeah, that's absolutely true. I would turn the question around and say, okay, of all these different desires and these moving desires that I notice in myself -- you know, they change over time; they change in where I am and whatever. Two things. This goes back to Nicole's question. When they move, can I notice what was significant in moving them? So for example, I might have this great desire, and someone or a couple of people just say something, and it's a little bit ridiculing, and then I find that my desire is gone. It could be a million different things. Or I have this desire, and I'm just relaxing, watching TV, and I have a beer or whatever it is, and then the desire has gone, and somehow it wasn't there the next day, or it isn't there the next day. One's investigating the conditions. It's a hard thing, if we go back to what we said with Nicole. It's a hard thing. If desire is a flame, it's a hard thing to not get blown out, you know? And then all kinds of other flames are ignited by things -- advertisements, and peer pressure, and who knows what, and indoctrination from cultures and sub-cultures we're in. But that's one thing: to actually investigate what moves it, what blows it out.
But the second thing, with that, I think, is investigating the sense of a desire, okay? And I think if you compare your desire for two different things -- an obviously ridiculous example would be your desire to eat a certain food or whatever, versus something else -- you can actually feel when a desire is deeper in you. There's a qualitative and quantitative difference. But we need to really begin sensing into the differences there, and learning to kind of notice, tune into, and take care of the deeper desires. But introspectively, there should be differences that you can tell. That's a short answer for now, and there is really -- and I was thinking very much, because somehow it had come up between us at some point, and I devoted a chunk of time to it on those recordings.
The other thing with all this is, some people have patterns -- in fact, it's quite common to have patterns that ... This is a jhāna retreat, not a desire retreat! [laughter] But anyway. I have talked about it a lot, and I think it's important, but I don't want to spend the whole time talking about it. It's good to know oneself in relation to desire. What I see is that that's quite rare, as well, that a person really knows: "I know my patterns with desire." It's not "I know what I want," but "I actually know what happens in me with desires." So some people, the flame can't get going. Some people, the flame goes, and they can't tolerate it. Some people get confused or distracted by other ignitions that get thrown from all kinds of other ... Some people, the flame bursts up, and then somehow they don't really follow through, or they say, "I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do that," and it doesn't really follow through. What's happened? What happened over those months or whatever it is, that one isn't a person of one's word? So it's really good to know oneself in relation to these things. I think it's really, really important. And I really meant it the other day when I said, in terms of significance of teachings, this is a much more significant teaching than anything I might tell you about how to move from one jhāna to another -- maybe even than the jhānas themselves. In fact, I would say that. It's like, really understanding ourselves, and really becoming mature in relation to desire. And it's huge. But there are a lot of aspects to that -- a lot, lot, lot of aspects to it, and I've spoken about it a lot on recordings and things. Is that okay for now? Yeah?
Yogi: Thank you.
Q4: difference between mental and physical feelings, reifying the energy body vs seeing it as not a real thing
Rob: Okay. I've got a couple of written ones. Should I do that, or someone else right now? I've got a couple from you here! [laughs] Let me do someone else's one, and then we'll come back. So,
I'm exploring sukha and its different nuances -- the buoyant and bubbly, and more recently, its soft, gentle aspect. I'm enjoying it. I feel absorbed into it. But a question keeps arising for me, again and again, about the difference between a mental feeling and a physical one. What is a mental feeling or an emotion exactly? What isn't a mental feeling or an emotion exactly? I thought that all feelings could only actually be felt in the body. I do have a sense of feeling the mental aspect/emotion, but it's not really clear where in the body I'm feeling it. It just feels all over, so it's harder to probe than with the pīti. Yesterday, you spoke about tuning into a frequency in the energy body, which I do, but isn't the energy body just imaginary? Maybe I'm just experiencing the hindrance of doubt. If you can distil this somewhat lengthy question and offer any answers, that would be much appreciated.
Yeah, this is important. Thank you. So there are a few things, a few questions sort of woven in there. "What is a mental feeling or an emotion exactly?" It's a really complex thing, is what it is. Usually, I would say an emotion has several aspects to it. It usually has some kind of thought content, or a type of thought content associated with it. Of course, once you get into the jhāna, then it's like emotions free of thoughts. It also usually has a kind of texture of the mind. It's like the mind feels like it has a certain texture to it -- agitated, or spacious, or calm, or whatever, but even more subtle than that. But it also has a bodily aspect to it. So at least those three aspects, plus probably beliefs and a whole network of other things, are part of the complexes that we call 'emotions.' This business about "Oh, sukha is an emotional thing, and pīti ...", two things about that. One is it's a thing from Abhidhamma. I don't necessarily subscribe to that. Abhidhamma is Buddhist psychology, and it tends to have a certain way of framing things that, you know, sometimes it's useful, I find, and sometimes really not useful. So it's classified that when sukha or something like that, "This is a mental feeling. This is a this. This is a that." They like putting things in categories, and it's all very sort of black and white, and very simple-sounding, but there are lots and lots of categories of different things.
So an emotion, to me, is actually a complex thing. When we get down to jhānic emotion -- like, let's say, the sukha -- in a way, you're talking about a simpler thing, but I would still say it's felt two ways. It's felt in the body, and again, in jhānic terms, that's the primary thing, because every time the Buddha says, with the first four jhānas, "The practitioner pervades and permeates, suffuses and saturates, drenches and steeps, etc., their whole body with that quality." So most people, I think, who haven't practised meditation or energy body awareness would just be a bit baffled by that. What does it mean to have, let's say, happiness in one's whole body? I mean, some people might get it, but generally ... and then to focus on that. But this is really the primary thing in jhāna practice. It's the energetic vibration, the energy body vibration, so to speak, or frequency, which is an aspect of an emotion. Now, there's a mental one as well. Where is that mental one? Well, it's in the mind. But where's the mind? I don't know. It doesn't really matter. What matters in terms of practice is the primary thing is body, body, body, energy body, energy body, energy body.
Let me backtrack and say one more thing about this pīti and sukha business. I've said it already. At first, when people are opening to all this, I will say something like "Pīti is a physical feeling, and then sukha is an emotional one." It's a white lie, okay? It's just something that helps people differentiate those two at first. But after a while, it should be like, "Well, actually, they're both kind of physical. They're just different vibrations physically, or different ranges of vibrations physically." So it was just a little piggyback idea, but basically, they're vibrations in the body.
And then this second sort of piece of question here. "I do have a sense of feeling the mental aspect or emotion, but it's not really clear where in the body I'm feeling it. It just feels all over." So that's perfect. That's what we want: "Permeates and pervades the whole body." That's exactly what we want. I feel it all over, even homogenously all over. "So it's harder to probe than with the pīti." Not necessarily. Sometimes, say, when the pīti or the sukha feels stronger in some place -- so you've got three scenarios. (1) You've got a scenario that it hasn't spread yet, and it won't spread this session, and then, okay, that's where I do my probing, obviously. I stop trying to spread it, but that's where I do my probing. (2) You've got a second scenario where it's spread, but it's not 100 per cent homogenous, and then I take the strongest area, and that's where I do my probing. (3) The third scenario is, it's completely spread, and it's completely homogenous, and then I just choose a random place. It doesn't matter, if it's homogenous, and I just go into it at one point. It's like a person diving into a swimming pool. They're diving in at one point, but once they dive in -- or a lake -- that very diving, that very penetrating, might make them feel like they're in a different terrain. It might take them to another level at that process. So you can just choose any place and do that.
"Yesterday, you spoke about tuning into a frequency in the energy body, which I do, but isn't the energy body just imaginary?" Well, the energy body is no more imaginary than anything else is imaginary. So, again, it's one of those things -- it's like, sometimes it's really helpful for me, I feel, or I sense, for a particular person at a particular time, to take the energy body as a real thing. And of course, there are loads of schools of yoga and healing and all kinds of things, shamanistic healing, that take the energy body as a real thing. That's fine. I'm a little -- ngh; talk about subtle body or energy body, and it's reified. It's fine, but I really think that has limits. The thing about the energy body, or one of the things about the energy body that's really important to understand, is that it's very amenable to our imagination. So that's not quite the same thing as saying it's totally imaginary, because when we say something's imaginary, we tend to then pooh-pooh it relative to something else. That's why I said it's as imaginary as anything else, maybe. But the energy body, as we're playing with it, is very sensitive and susceptive and responsive to our imagination, so that if I imagine the energy moving in a certain way from my energy body, lo and behold, that's what I will experience in the energy body if I keep doing that. Make sense?
And then with other people, or the same person at a different time, it's like, "Okay, enough now with this kind of reifying of the energy body. You've been doing that for years." And again, it's a bit like what Jason was asking yesterday, or someone else, about locks and unblocking things. One can get kind of obsessed about this, as if the whole of practice is sort of getting my energy body to feel a certain way. For those people, I might say, "You know, it's not a real thing. Actually what's more deeply real, or more usefully seen as real, is just the idea that we're playing with perception." So I don't think it's doubt, so much as some clarity was needed there. Does that sound okay? I can't see back there. Can you just ...? Yes? Okay, good. Thank you.
Okay. Very good.
Q5: bright light nimitta
Rob: I think these are useful, anyway, for other people, so I'm going to say them.
Which jhāna does that second bright light nimitta appear in?
So the bright light -- this is quite common for some people -- can appear in any jhāna, or even before a jhāna. It's what I call a secondary nimitta. It's just an indication that the samādhi is going well. Some people get it, very associated with the first jhāna. Some people, it only comes in the fourth jhāna. Some people, it never comes. Some people, it's just their access concentration or whatever. So it's not particular to a jhāna. It's just a secondary nimitta. In other words, it's not of primary importance, unless we really mix it with the primary nimitta, and get into it that way.
Q6: spectrum of equanimity in jhāna
Rob: And second question,
Did you say that jhānas one to four had equanimity in them?
No, I didn't say that, but the Buddha said jhānas three and four had equanimity in them. I was saying, "Hold on, that's a little misleading." We really need to unpack what's primary in jhānas three and four (it's the peacefulness -- and I'll explain that jhāna four tomorrow), and unpack this whole idea of equanimity, because as we've been talking about a little bit today, it's actually quite a complex idea. We need to kind of go a little more carefully. From another point of view, and relating to Monica's question, yeah, you could say each jhāna has some degree of equanimity to it, because equanimity -- most things are not on/off switches, either you have equanimity or you don't. You have some degree of equanimity. So the first jhāna, even when it's, you know, you have to peel me off the ceiling because it's just ecstasy like that, it's actually got some degree of equanimity in it, in relation to other things, you know?
So a lot of these things, a lot of Dharma concepts, are really not on/off, black or white. They're really spectra. And if we think of them as on/off, we're actually -- a bit like what I said about clinging, or self, a lot of people report, "I was meditating, and then there was no self," or da-da-da, and it's like, "No. Think about it more as a spectrum, because what you're calling 'no self' at the moment is actually just a much less fabricated sense of self. It's just lower down on the spectrum." And if I have that idea of spectra -- I'm repeating what I said before -- in relation to equanimity, in relation to self, in relation to clinging, all these other words, then actually that's going to enable me to notice way more than I would have noticed if I just had a view of "Either there is self, or there isn't self in a moment. Either self is being fabricated, or it isn't. Either there's equanimity, or there isn't." So this idea of a spectrum which just goes subtler and subtler, and it's part of the beauty and the art to trace it and understand it -- that's really, really important. Okay. Is there something else? Oh, I thought you had another question. [inaudible response from yogi] Is she allowed another one? Shall we vote? [laughter] Yeah, go for it. Go for it.
Q7: flavours of contentment in third jhāna
Yogi: Okay. I think this question is about, like, territories, territory and responsiveness. I think a lot of this retreat I've been trying to figure out how to stay in one territory. I'm working in the third jhāna space, and I'm wondering about when you talked about contentment being one of the things, one of the levels. I've noticed that there are edges that I drop out into another space, and one of them is with the contentment. I'm really trying to figure out the edge of where that is, of how far down to go in my experience of what's coming up in terms of contentment there. I notice in the middle range there's a very kind of -- like the way you very much described the atmosphere of that space of the third jhāna, like with contentment. And then when I go lower ... So there was a kind of sense of, like, perfect contentment, like a kind of quite light feeling of it. But then I notice I can go really very, very low with the contentment, and still have the qualities of sukha and peacefulness, but the contentment is quite a lot bigger. It's more a kind of deep well of rich contentment feeling, rather than, like, perfect contentment kind of feeling. I'm just wondering how -- is that still within the range?
Rob: So when you go deeper, the contentment is not perfect? Is that what you're saying?
Yogi: No, it gets more kind of -- rather than quite light and gentle, not quite uplifting but more like light and gentle, it becomes more rich and deeper, in my experience.
Rob: But it still feels like perfect contentment?
Yogi: Yeah, yeah.
Rob: That's fine. Yeah, the contentment thing, it's not the primary thing. It's just kind of me pointing out a bandwidth, that if you really want to get into all this stuff and develop the kind of sensitivity to all these different levels, then it's a good thing to know, and it's a good thing to hang out with. Might it take different kind of flavours and colours at different times? Yeah. But the primary thing is the contentment, and it really feels like it's really, really satisfying -- I mean, extremely satisfying. Then you're still in the contentment. Does that ...? Okay, good.
[pause questions]
I want to just say a couple more little things. Again, just the real encouragement to marinate, yeah? Especially if different things are opening, it can be very tempting to want to just slide around everywhere and check out, "Oh, what's this? What's that?" But as we've been emphasizing right from the beginning, the fruits of this particular set of practices, what we call jhāna practice, will come from marinating, which means many, many times, over and over, just putting yourself, submerging yourself, and holding, sustaining something for as long as you can -- hour, two hours, longer, three, whatever, four. Just sit in something, over and over and over. That's going to be doing something to mind, heart, and body, that just won't get the chance to happen if we're sliding around too much.
If you've done a lot of soulmaking and imaginal practice, oftentimes one doesn't actually ... One of the amazing things about soulmaking practice is just a couple of minutes sometimes with an image can be incredibly potent. It's also true that a couple of minutes with a jhāna can be incredibly potent, but it's much more the case that if we really marinate for much longer in a jhāna, it's going to do something that it won't do in just a couple of minutes. So it's actually quite rare for a soulmaking practitioner or an imaginal practitioner to really just spend hours and hours and hours revisiting the same image, and just really, really being with that. At least I haven't kind of put that out as an offering, and I haven't heard anyone really do that. That's not really what we're doing so much with imaginal practices.
There's a difference here. I'm just going to say this very briefly, because I know some of you don't know this territory at all about Soulmaking Dharma. I'll just say this very briefly for those of you that do. In case you are a soulmaker, and you find yourself actually taking the same kind of rhythms into jhāna practice, which is just moving quite quickly, and all these lovely, amazing things opening up, when we're with an image, when we're with an erotic-imaginal image, when there's eros for an image (and I don't mean by that sexual eros, necessarily; it could mean that, but more than that), we're doing something different. We're resonating and being with it, but we want to maintain the twoness. Remember this from soulmaking teachings? Why? Because eros needs twoness. Eros needs the polarity, and the imaginal needs the eros. Without the eros, the imaginal folds, and without the twoness, the eros folds, and therefore the imaginal folds.
In jhāna practice, actually what we're doing is, as much as we can, that's the A of SASSIE -- can I dissolve into this? Can I kind of dissolve my body into the peacefulness or whatever? So in imaginal practice, the duality is maintained, and self doesn't dissolve into its object. There's not that in even intentional direction. We maintain this polarity, this erotic tension between self and imaginal object, lovely as that is. We're not letting it collapse into oneness.
In jhāna practice, the movement is actually to let it dissolve. In imaginal practice, the self also might start to become imaginal: here's this wonderful imaginal object, and the self also starts to become imaginal. In jhāna practice, the self should become less and less of a sense of self. Back to the spectrum of self, there's actually less and less of a self. It's more and more dissolved. So these are really, really important differences. The movement is towards less, we could say, less polarity, less duality in jhāna practice, whereas in imaginal practice, you're actually sustaining -- not always, but for the most part, you want to sustain some sense of duality and polarity. Sometimes you can let yourself dissolve that way a little bit, merge, union and all that, but if you do too much of that, it will just dissolve the whole thing.
Do we ever reach a state of complete non-duality in jhāna practice? No, no matter what it might feel like, etc. Again, here's one of those spectra. It's a spectrum of less and less separation -- not necessarily as you go more and more from one to eight, but your experience of, say, jhāna number four at different times might be more or less separate, dualistic, etc., because duality is also a word that I consider a spectrum. It's very easy to say, "Oh, that was a completely non-dualistic experience, and the self was gone, and blah blah blah." It's probably not. In fact, it's definitely not. If there's a jhāna, in my way of understanding this, there's still some duality. But still, because the A is open-ended in SASSIE, the movement is towards less duality. Does this make sense for the soulmakers? So there's a difference there. Just check if you're skidding around too much, and "Oh, that's a different modality. That's a different rhythm." And in the jhāna, it's really towards dissolving -- towards dissolving; you will never completely dissolve. However absorbed you are, however great the A is of SASSIE, there can be more. Yeah? So just to delineate between those two.
Yeah? Just give me a second here, because I need to say a couple of things. Okay, yeah, let's try.
Q8: eros in relationship to the jhānas
Yogi: I feel like I have a strong erotic relationship to the jhānas, and I've had since pīti began to arise. So the way I experience absorption in the jhāna is kind of -- yeah, it's a temporary absorption, but I also have like this long-term relationship with a jhāna, which is soulful and erotic in a sense, and it's very central in my experience of them. So would you think it's ...?
Rob: Yeah, so I mentioned this very briefly one time; there's so much information. I'll say it again, if I understand what you're saying, Keren. Again, it's not a soulmaking retreat, but just very briefly. So in Soulmaking Dharma, we talk about eros, and we define eros as this wanting or movement towards more intimacy, more closeness, more touching, more penetration, more opening, etc., with whatever it is -- and that could be a jhāna; it could be an imaginal person or whatever. But that definition is, if you like, the seed definition. The larger definition of eros is, okay, it does that, there's that movement, but in doing that, it ignites and stimulates the whole soulmaking dynamic, which involves psyche and logos as well. And when psyche and logos get expanded, the object becomes bigger, and richer, and more multifaceted, and more complex, has more beyonds, and then the self becomes image as well.
So outside of meditation, outside of jhāna meditation, one might have -- and ideally, to get the engines really going, and the whole relationship with it -- one does have an erotic relationship, there is eros in relation to the jhānas in the bigger sense, in the wider sense. There's a whole image. There's a self-image -- me on the path, me and the history, me and the teacher, me and the jhānas, that territory, their mystical sense. But that's outside of meditation. In the meditation, it's eros in the smaller sense. We're not letting it go to psyche and logos, because that's a kind of proliferation, and we want it simple: "It's this thing, and I'm just dissolving into it." We don't let the self become image. We don't let the thing become more complex, in a way. We actually want to get more into it like that. So it's different -- there's eros, but it's the small version, the seed definition. Does that make sense? Okay. We can talk about it another time, but that's, I think, yeah, quite an important distinction.
[pause questions]
There are just a couple of other things, if it's okay, because then we need to end. Yes, again, a context thing. So right now we've been talking about soulmaking practice, and then we were talking about desire, and we were talking about equanimity, and yesterday or whenever we were talking about emotions. Sometimes -- maybe less so these days -- but you often hear something like, "Oh, jhānas are dangerous because what you're doing then is suppressing some emotion. You could be bypassing. You could be engaging in spiritual bypassing, or just suppressing emotions or traumas that are really important," etc. I think probably as you do more and more jhāna practice, you'll realize more and more, actually, that there isn't really suppression going on, or the whole idea of it, it will become obvious that -- at least the way we're practising it -- this is not what's happening here.
But the wider point I wanted to make was there's no single practice that's a complete and perfect practice. So we really have to have this sense of a larger context. When we're doing jhāna practice, yeah, we do have a certain leaning or preference in relation to, as I said right on the opening talk, how I'm going to relate to difficult emotions when they arise. But then I have a second-order, a second-tier preference, and a third, and a fourth, you know? But there's a certain leaning that way. When we do other practices, we'll reverse that order or whatever.
Is there a danger of spiritual bypassing? Yeah, there is a danger of spiritual bypassing. Does everyone know that word? Like avoiding some issue by -- well, by avoiding it; by hanging out in a nice space, in this case. But we can spiritual bypass through any practice, in fact. And there are other dangers. So what I'm trying to say is no single practice avoids all the dangers or is without pitfalls. If I never relate to emotions in the way that we're exploring on this retreat -- for instance, this thing, "Well, might it be a hindrance at its root?" And what happens if I don't give my attention there, and I just let the mind really develop its loveliness? And sometimes let it develop its loveliness, and then put -- I'm not even suggesting you do this; sometimes it arises -- a difficult memory comes up within that loveliness? Or, sometimes, very occasionally, you can put that difficult memory in the loveliness, and see what happens. It's very clear: I'm not suppressing anything. I'm actually putting it there, or it's coming up. There's no sense of I'm blocking it or inhibiting my emotional responses. And see what happens. There's something we can learn about emotions through jhāna practice that it's actually much, much more difficult to learn through other modalities, other modes of practice.
[1:20:18] So the danger of not doing jhāna practice is that we don't learn those particular things about emotions. Are they the complete and final truth about emotions? No, they're not. They're just one perspective, one aspect. But to have, again, this range of both understanding and possibility, and the freedom and the skill with emotions -- that's really, really precious. So we're just in a certain context here. Of course, I could be in psychotherapy, or working in some other with my emotions, and then at some point, someone points out, "Oh, might you be ... is there a word for it? Socio-politically-ecologically bypassing?", a little bit akin to what Victor was saying. There's every possibility of that as well. And there have been critiques of all kinds of spiritual practices and psychological practices that, "Oh, I'm getting so into this thing, and believing in the reality of this, that I've neglected this."
So there's no one practice that's going to take care of everything. It really is important: what's the bigger picture? What's the context? How am I seeing this in a bigger maṇḍala of collections of practices that will do their best to kind of cover the whole terrain of what it is to be a human being, and see things from different angles and perspectives, and work with things in different ways? That's really, really important. That was one thing.
And just finally, before we end. How long have we been here? I know it probably feels like decades for some people, but how long? [yogis in background] What's it? Thirteen days? Is that scratched on some people's ...? [laughter] So usually, probably about the third evening, or maybe the fourth evening of a week retreat, insight retreat, I would probably say something, as I ring the bell for the final sitting, I would probably say something like, "So check in how you're feeling right now. It's the end of the daily schedule, but maybe there's actually energy there, and you're just going to bed out of habit. Or maybe you feel a bit tired, but actually, if I look into it, it's actually aversion that's making me tired, and maybe I want to sit up and explore that a little bit." But there would be the encouragement to just see what's possible in terms of extending the effort on a macro-level.
So it's thirteen days now, apparently, and I'm saying it now. I don't know where you are with it; you're probably all in a different place, but I'll say it to everyone. Again, it's one of those things that I should have said at the beginning. I kind of thought that it was obvious, just the way the schedule looked, but in a way, the schedule does not end at 9:30. It's just that there's a group sitting that we like everyone to be here for between 9 and 9:30. But the hall is open. And especially as retreats get longer, people get all kinds of different rhythms, and a lot more energy available. Sometimes one just gets up or goes to bed at the same time out of habit. Just check -- how much is it habit? Sometimes it's fear: I'm afraid that I'll be tired tomorrow or whatever it is. And sometimes it's, again, aversion. Tiredness can come from aversion. It's not actually that I need sleep; it's actually that I'm just pushing things away very subtly, and the mind closes in, and that makes me just want to go to bed, and going to bed is a kind of "Let's push things away."
And similarly, the day doesn't begin at 6:45, the meditative day. I mean, it can, if that's your rhythm. But again, this invitation to listen in, and feel what feels possible, and what feels right, and what your energy capacities are. And if you're not sure, let's play with it a little bit. So some retreats you might hear -- it's kind of gone out of fashion, but some retreats, it's like, "Less sleep, less sleep, less sleep" as the days go on. I don't think that's wise. But there is something about listening and finding out, and if I don't know, experimenting, really experimenting. Lunchtime, breakfast time -- depends when your work period is, but basically all the places are open to practise during the morning work period, after lunch, etc. We've been talking a lot about effort levels, and there's the micro-level, this kind of, "Okay, can I really just lean back a little bit, metaphorically, perhaps into more of the receiving, moment to moment? Can I make the attention a bit more intense right now, in this moment?"
That's really important, but there's also the macro-level, which we mentioned as well. And that has to do with the rhythm of the day. And so the day can very much breathe, but you also want to be listening. We want to be listening, and responsive, and stretching things, and experimenting. Sometimes we feel like, "Okay, I know I'm an over-striver, and therefore I should not stay up late, or not get up early," or whatever it is, "or not sit so much." And then on this retreat, we've been putting a lot of emphasis on how important the opening of the heart is, and the nourishing of the heart. But opening the heart is not mutually incompatible with spending more time in formal meditation, or extending or playing with one's effort. They're not like, if you do one, the other isn't happening.
So the time is precious. I mean, I did say -- and I really mean it -- don't put too much pressure on these three weeks. But at the same time -- and hopefully you have a sense of this -- the time is precious. We're already thirteen days [in], and time flies, and things change, and some opportunities won't come again. So it's more about, rather than 'should,' it's more about questions of sensitivity, attunement, responsiveness, experimentation, with the whole "How much am I sitting? How much am I playing my edges? What are my habitual kind of habit patterns? Or what creeps in around things like how much to practise formally, when to go to bed, when to get up, etc.? How much is habit? How much is a little bit of fear? How much is even a little bit of aversion?" But rather than any 'should,' or any formula -- "Everyone should sleep X hours" -- or anything like that, it's really this invitation to extend the sensitivity, attunement, responsiveness, and experimentation -- extend it to that domain as well. And play, and see, without any sense of 'should.' But we have to experiment to find certain things out and see what's possible. So I wanted to say that.
Okay. Very good. Let's have a bit of quiet together.
[silence]
Okay. Thank you, everybody. Time for tea.
Rob Burbea, "The Invitation of Otherness (Autonomy, Eros, and Intentionality)" (1 June 2019), https://dharmaseed.org/teacher/210/talk/58784/, accessed 24 March 2021. ↩︎
