Transcription
Okey-doke. So, seventh jhāna, which the Buddha didn't call it that, as far as I'm aware, but it has the appealing name of the 'realm of nothingness' and the 'dimension of nothingness.' Let's again start by checking out what the Buddha says, which is -- this monk or whatever has gone through the first six jhānas, and then:
The thought occurs to him, "What if I, with the complete transcending of the sphere [the realm, the base, the dimension] of the infinitude of consciousness, recognizing, 'There is nothing,' what if I were to enter and remain in the sphere of nothingness?" Without jumping at the sphere of nothingness, he enters and remains in the sphere of nothingness. He sticks with that theme, develops it, pursues it, and establishes himself firmly in it.[1]
[laughs] Let's just sit quietly for a while. [laughter] But believe me, it gets worse. [laughter] Trying to put language to these -- it gets worse. So, okay. Some people -- again, I have no idea about statistics, but it's certainly not unheard of for a person, even a beginner on their first insight meditation retreat, and maybe they just went for some [stress reduction], they heard it was good for stress reduction and relaxation, and somehow, following simple instructions, etc., they're sitting there one day in meditation, minding their own business, and a huge, big, black space opens up, and they feel like they kind of fall into it: 'a void,' or 'the Void.' And they might have heard the language of the Void, and it's got charged, or it refers to certain -- actually, it refers to different things in different Buddhist traditions over the years, and other traditions: the Void. So some proportion of people have that experience. Something like that happens.
But usually, when that happens out of the blue, so to speak, like that, and without much preparation, without much orientation, there's usually not really a discerning which, if any, of the four arūpa-jhānas, the four arūpa (immaterial) realms, dimensions, one has found oneself encountering. So the person will speak: "Everything disappeared. There was nothing there." But actually, I've heard people say that in relation to the first jhāna. It becomes very hard -- these states, including the first jhāna, are so different from people's usual experience, understandably, that one struggles not only to put into language and describe to the teacher (if you have an interview) or whoever it is, or a friend, what's happened, but also to actually discern what has happened. As the Buddha said: "What's present now, and what is absent?"[2] So someone just says, "Everything disappeared!" Well, actually, there's still a lot of stuff. In the first jhāna, there's still pīti, sukha, and all the rest of it.
Here, in the realm of nothingness, there's a lot less. But usually, without training, the eyes are not used to the dark, so to speak. So there isn't this discernment: what is still there? What is not? And if you ask such a person who's fallen into, stumbled into encountering something like a void, a big, black space, ask them: "Was there a sense of space there?" They may not have had that much discernment. "Was there a sense of space, or was there not a sense of space?" So usually, if I say to you, "Imagine nothing" -- maybe not for you guys at this point -- just say to someone, "Imagine just nothingness," probably a person would try and imagine a big, black, empty space with nothing in it, probably. But that's not the realm of nothingness. That's probably more akin to the realm of infinite space.
At any rate, this novice meditator, or meditator without any kind of map or orientation or understanding of what has just happened, this big, dark space with nothing in it, without much discrimination, because they're not trained, and they're not prepared to discriminate the subtleties of differences in all these states, most would say, "Oh, it's a nothingness." But actually, because also of the non-discrimination, the non-preparation to be able to discriminate and discern, there won't be the blossoming, there won't be the full blossoming of whatever sort of potential state there is there. It's the discriminating, it's the discerning that allows something to blossom. We're back to this noticing, attuning, amplifying. 'Amplifying' means 'blossoming.' If I don't notice a difference, if I don't attune to it, if I don't notice and attune to it, then it doesn't get amplified. In other words, it doesn't blossom.
So whatever state this is (that oftentimes actually scares the living daylights out of a person, if they're a novice meditator, if such a thing happens), it's probably not really any of the formless jhānas. It's sort of in that territory, potentially could be any of them, but because there's not the discrimination, and because there isn't the preparation and the skill, and the subtlety and sensitivity of awareness to discriminate, because of all that, it actually doesn't really become any one of them, probably. More significantly, the person almost certainly does not understand how that happened at that point. "I was just meditating. I was just noticing things, letting go, and then this thing happened!" Almost certainly had no idea how it happened, or why it happened. And they may or may not get much explanation from books, or whoever's teaching the retreat, or talks or whatever. No understanding how it happened or why it happened, so it just seems a random occurrence. And again, it might be presented as a kind of random occurrence: "What's the important thing? Two things: you'll be okay, and it's impermanent." Both of which are true, but there's no real understanding of the why there. And the why has to do with dependent origination, dependent arising, or dependent fading. [7:58]
So it probably doesn't fully blossom. Probably there's very little or no understanding of how or why that has opened or kind of emerged. And as I mentioned, probably, or often, it will be quite frightening, such an experience. One just feels like one's on the edge of an abyss or has fallen into an abyss. There will be fear with such an opening, such a deep bottoming out of experience, such a deep disappearance of the world of phenomenal reality, the conventional and accustomed world of phenomenal reality. There will be fear, usually, if there isn't a kind of series of stepping-stones to such an experience, a series of stepping-stones that one has enjoyed and learnt to trust, and delighted in, and has become a stable basis, stable stepping-stones. And what are they? Well, the other six jhānas -- so these other six jhānas, up to the seventh jhāna, because we learn to really trust them. They're also droppings out. They're also disappearances, to some degree. They're [fadings], unfabricating to some degree. But we've got used to that. Not only have we got used to it. We've learnt that they can become stable and that they're delightful, and we trust them. There's nothing to be feared here. Without those stepping-stones, and the training and time that it takes to really establish those stepping-stones, then just being presented with this edge of an abyss, or falling into an abyss, is going to be frightening. It's a long way from normal consciousness to such an abyss. It's much less of a way from the realm of infinite consciousness, the sixth jhāna, to the seventh jhāna. It's just a step, and so there's much, much, much less likelihood for there to be fear. And then that fear can cause mayhem in all kinds of ways.
So what's going on here? And the Buddha doesn't help that much, does he, there? We're in the infinite consciousness, and it's not, then, with this next step, that consciousness is not there in the realm of nothingness, but the sense of space has gone. This is why I said: if I say to you, "Can you imagine a big, black space with nothing in it?" [silence]
Yeah? Most would have some sense of that. Okay. But we're saying that's not actually the realm of nothingness. Can you imagine nothingness -- not even space? [silence]
Little trickier, huh? [laughs] So this has really gone quite beyond our usual sense of things. Space has gone. It's not that consciousness has gone. Consciousness is there, but consciousness is not prominent, in the way it was in the sixth jhāna, in the realm of infinite consciousness, when the consciousness and the consciousness knowing itself, or even knowing the infinite space, was the primary nimitta. There's still consciousness. There has to be consciousness there in the realm of nothingness. Otherwise we wouldn't have any sense of anything, any perception of anything, any consciousness of anything. But the consciousness is not prominent. It's rather that the citta, the mind, the heart is struck, captivated, drawn to the sense of nothingness -- this sense of nothingness which doesn't even have a sense of space with it. Or it might have the last vestiges of space, but as you get deeper into it, even the space kind of -- I don't know what the word is -- collapses or gets sucked into itself, like a kind of black hole or something like that. And that nothingness is the primary nimitta. That's what the mind is drawn to, captivated by, struck by, entranced by, etc. So consciousness is still there, but it's not the primary thing.
Later on (and I hope we will get to go into this or describe it on this retreat), we have to re-find and re-focus on the consciousness as one aspect or thread of being able to go even deeper. So at the moment, we forget about the aspect of consciousness. Later we have to find it again, as just one thread of a path that can take us beyond even this nothingness. Experientially, usually, such a state, the realm of nothingness, is basically pitch black. And as I said, we've gone beyond anything that could be described as 'space with nothing in it,' which would be more akin to the infinite space.
Sometimes, without the sense of space, it can sometimes feel as if it almost has a 'thick' texture to it, because the space sort of thins things out, and then there's no space. Almost feels thick, but I think -- and this is where we get very hard language, but that probably passes. And that thickness, it's not that we've then taken a step backwards in terms of refinement. This is definitely a refinement over the last realm, of infinite consciousness. There's nothing left as a perception, nothing left as a perception but the perception of nothing. There's nothing left but nothing. [laughs] There's nothing left but nothingness. And that's the one thing that's striking one. It's something, again, very breathtaking. It may be, for some, even someone who's not a beginner (like the person we described, just innocently sitting on an insight meditation retreat, having never heard about any of this stuff), it may still be, for some people, an acquired taste -- for some people. But I would say, at some point, either immediately or gradually or eventually, it will turn, and one will fall in love with it, fall in love with this mystical nothing, this mystical void, this mystical nothingness.
So how do we get there? How does it open up?
(1) Well, one possibility is just letting the realm of infinite consciousness -- letting that mature, just really getting to know that, sit in that, love it, open to it, get to know it inside out, stay in it, stay in it, stay in it, dissolve as much as one can, etc. And naturally, at some point, there will be an evolution, and it will sort of take a quantum leap, a quantum jump into a different dimension: the dimension of nothingness.
(2) As always, eventually, with time and the intention to develop mastery, there's the possibility of accessing the realm of nothingness just through a subtle intention, through the memory of it. That takes a lot of practice, as with all the jhānas, just getting familiar, but it's just as possible.
(3) But here (and I want to dwell on this) is where the insight ways of looking, as a way in to this realm, get really interesting and really important, really, really significant. So in this other sutta that we've already mentioned, the Āneñjasappāya Sutta, The Way to the Imperturbable, or The Conducive to the Imperturbable, it's sometimes translated.[3] Here is a sutta where the bulk of it is, the Buddha is talking about insight ways of looking to predominantly the formless realms. There's other stuff in it too, but ... He's talked about up to the sixth jhāna, and he gives the name 'the imperturbable' to the fourth, fifth, and sixth jhānas. So just for this sutta, it seems to refer to those: fourth, fifth, sixth.
So he's gone up to that point, and then he says: "Then again, the disciple of the noble ones considers this." I would say, this 'consider,' again, I don't know what a better word in English would be. It's not an intellectual pondering. One employs a way of looking, and that's very light, very agile, very subtle, and very potent. A heavy pondering, philosophically, is not going to produce any meditative state and open any doors to other dimensions. Okay, so we don't really have a word in English, but the way I would definitely translate is:
The disciple of the noble ones employs a way of looking which involves a very subtle text that says something like, and understands something like: "All sensuality, and all sensual perceptions, and all perceptions of forms, and all perceptions of the form jhānas, the rūpa-jhānas, and the realm of infinite space, and the realm of infinite consciousness, all that -- all sense perceptions, all form perceptions, all rūpa-jhāna perceptions, all perceptions of infinite space and infinite consciousness, all that -- they're all perceptions. They're all just perceptions. Where they cease without remainder, where they end without remainder, where they no longer are, that is peaceful, that is exquisite: i.e. the dimension of nothingness. Practising and frequently abiding in this way, her mind acquires confidence in that dimension.
I'll read the others, too, and then we'll come back and do them individually. [pause] No, let's take them individually. It's better.
(1) So what's going on here? Basically, one's employing a way of looking. Again, if you're not used to this idea of 'ways of looking,' we're talking about something very subtle. It's an insight way of looking. It's a certain conception and relationship with, in this case, all those perceptions -- so anything that comes up, or that might come up. One might be in the fifth jhāna, or one might be looking at a perception -- a material, sensual perception in the world; it might be the third jhāna, a perception of a rūpa-jhāna, whatever -- all those perceptions, and whatever perceptions will come up or have come up, they're not peaceful. They're dukkha, basically. So some of you know what I call the first dukkha practice: 'unsatisfactory.' Particularly, they're not peaceful. And there's a sort of confidence there that when they're let go, when these perceptions fade, when they're let go, there's a dimension called 'the dimension of nothingness' which arises when they quieten, which arises when they're absent.
So this is all a very, very -- all that blah blah blah I just said is all right there, in a way of looking that's just happening again and again and again -- very subtle tincture in the way of looking, making the way of looking. Very subtle, not a whole verbose philosophy. And one's applying it to whatever one is perceiving, again and again and again, sustaining, over and over and over, and those perceptions fade. And in their absence, the perception of the realm of nothingness opens up. "They're not peaceful, but this is peaceful, this is exquisite: the dimension of nothingness." That's one way the Buddha describes. One could say, "Yeah, they're dukkha. They're unsatisfactory," but particularly with this emphasis on "They're not peaceful. This is peaceful."
(2) Second insight way of looking that opens up this realm:
Then again [the Buddha says], the disciple of the noble ones, having gone into the wilderness, to the root of a tree, into an empty dwelling [or into a retreat centre in rural Devon], considers this ...
Again, 'considers' -- same deal. It's with an insight way of looking, very subtle, very potent. Its potency is proportional to its subtlety in the mind, to its non-verboseness. There may be words there, very subtle, but it's talking about something very agile.
Considers this [I don't really like the word, but looks in this way]: "This is empty of self or of anything pertaining to self."
Or you could translate it:
"This is void of self or of anything belonging to self." Practising and frequently abiding in this way, his mind acquires confidence in that dimension [and the dimension of nothingness opens up].
When we read that originally, we think, "Oh, yeah. That's to do with there being no self, because Buddhists talk about there being no self, right?" I think it's actually more to do with what I would call the 'phenomenal self' -- not the the personal self, but the self of phenomena: "This is a lamp. This is a piece of paper. This is a glass. This is a hand," etc. So just as habitual avijjā, habitual delusion takes self to be something real, a real thing, we also do that with anything at all: "This is a sound. This is a taste. This is a clock."
And to me, what the deep teachings of emptiness are pointing to is not just the emptiness of the personal self, but also the emptiness of the self -- selves -- of phenomena. Everything is empty. All things are empty of being things, of being inherently existing things. So the way of looking, "This is empty of self, this is void of self, or of anything pertaining to self or belonging to self" -- I think it's referring to that. And the 'this' there is anything. Anything that's in the attention, anything that one pays attention to, whether it's this body or this ... whatever it is, it's empty of self, empty of self. It's empty in itself. That's another way of saying it: it's empty in itself. [23:43] If one does that again and again -- and again, we're talking about something very agile. It has to make sense to me what that means: "This is empty, empty. It's empty of self or of being something that is a part of some larger self, like it's a part of a larger phenomenon, like this spring here is a part of a larger lamp, or anything like that." That has to make sense. So the insight way of looking has to make sense to me.
A way of going about it is, 'empty of self' means it's fabricated. In the way we've been talking about, it means this thing does not exist as a thing unless the mind fabricates it as a thing. And if the mind doesn't put in the conditions -- clinging and conception and a certain relationship to it -- that thing does not get fabricated or constructed as a thing. So these ways of looking have to make sense. But it would be equivalent, or one way of doing it, or a shorthand way of saying it is 'fabricated, fabricated.' But I have to have the experience of having seen things unfabricate through playing with other ways of looking in the past. I have to have enough experience of that, that when I point at something with my mind and say, 'fabricated,' it's resting on the consolidation of my previous insight, seeing things fade. I know they're fabricated. I know it here, in my heart. So I can just look at them as 'fabricated,' and in that one word, there's a whole -- you could write a book explaining what that one word means: 'fabricated.' So it has to be there, and that's what I mean. It's very agile, because that one word contains a lot of understanding, but in a very dense way, but very light. So 'fabricated,' maybe. It's empty in itself or of a phenomenal self, which is more than to say, "It's not me or not mine," I would say. So to really point to this jhāna, we need to go beyond the teachings about personal self and 'not me, not mine,' anattā, and actually, to the level of the phenomenal self, the emptiness of phenomenal self, which is a deeper level.
It could also be -- and some of you know this, and it's in Seeing That Frees. All this stuff is in Seeing That Frees.[4] But it could also be, say, "This is empty -- empty of self or of anything belonging to a self, void of self or void of anything belonging to a self." Some of you know that in Seeing That Frees, you can find a meditation on wholes and parts, and a way of going deep into emptiness, or pretty deep into emptiness through a meditation on wholes and parts, and their relationship, and their mutual dependency and mutual emptiness.[5] And so, this could be referring to something like that: whatever this is, it's not a part of something bigger, and it's not a whole which has parts. The very notions are empty. So there are different ways of doing it. We don't have time to go into detail. I'm just kind of pointing at things here, but it's in Seeing That Frees, in quite a lot of detail. But that might be an option there. Okay, so that's the second one.
(3) The third one:
Then again, the disciple of the noble ones considers [all my qualifications about that word 'considers'] this: "I am not anything belonging to anyone anywhere. Nor is there anything belonging to me in anyone anywhere."
... Huh? [laughs] "I am not anything belonging to anyone anywhere. Nor is there anything belonging to me in anyone anywhere." It should make us scratch our heads. I think you have to consider also, perhaps, that the time of the Buddha, and the different religious views that were around, and the different meditative practices that were around, it's very possible -- and in fact, in the Buddha's biographical story, there's just this: that someone takes, for example, the realm of infinite consciousness as the ultimate reality, and everything in the world belongs to that ultimate reality. And not only is it the ultimate reality, but I, in my true essence, and you, in your true essence, are that ultimate reality. Your true essence, your Self (with a capital S) is that infinite, cosmic consciousness. And so this strange formula here -- it cuts the possibility of viewing myself or any of the elements of myself in relation to something like the cosmic consciousness. I am not belonging to anyone, that deity, that cosmic consciousness. There's nothing in my make-up that belongs to that. Even though I might have been attached to that view, and it might have been extremely helpful, beautiful, liberating, heart-opening view at another level, now I cut it. Remember what we said about provisional truth. I'm going to another level now: I am not anything belonging to anyone (any deity, for instance) anywhere. Nor is there anything belonging to me in anyone anywhere. I also am not taking the seat of identification with, for instance, the cosmic consciousness, or anything like that, so that all this kind of belongs to me. [30:07]
If you get to this point in practice, strange as these whole formulas sound, and puzzling and baffling and sort of arcane, it's still worth really, really playing with. Sometimes, even when we only half understand something, they have a magical power. Generally, that has contradicted what I said earlier -- it's like, if you say, 'fabricated, fabricated,' or 'empty,' it has to really mean something to you. You have to really understand it. And, contradicting myself, there's also the possibility: "I have no idea what the hell this means here, but I'm just going to try playing with this," and something happens. So that's for later. And then, again, the Buddha says:
Practising and frequently abiding in this way, his mind acquires confidence in that dimension.[6]
The realm of nothingness opens up, and that whole mystical depth of that. Again, we're talking about insight ways of looking. We're not talking about pondering. We're talking about something that's very light, liquid, agile, very, very subtle, but has immense power. I want to return to those insight ways of looking and their relationship with this dimension of nothingness in a bit. But just practically speaking, in terms of technique, etc., so here we are -- again, I really want to dissolve in this. I want to dissolve in this nothingness as much as I can. There will be, as in all the jhānas, a subtle polarity between subject and object. And 'object' here is the nothingness, but there will still be some degree of a subtle polarity, a subtle sense of separation, a subtle duality there. There's still the same thing, still SASSIE, but the A, again, Absorption -- how much can I dissolve in this? Remember, it's an open direction, so it doesn't end. We're trying to absorb more, we're trying to dissolve more, but we will never totally absorb. Even if you feel like you're totally absorbed in it, it's just that you haven't noticed a subtle remnant of subject-object duality there, of subject-object polarity there. We cannot totally erase or collapse the subject-object duality without much deeper insight ways of looking.
And I know in many circles, it's very popular and very quick off the tongue to say, "No subject-object duality, and there was no self" -- all this. It's very easy to say that, but again, this is why [there's] so much emphasis on subtlety, discernment, discrimination, attunement, really noticing there is still a subject-object duality here. And unless I move the insight to a whole other level (which hopefully we'll talk about in the next couple of days), that is not going to collapse. So usually when people talk about, "Yeah, there was no self, and there was no duality, and there's no conception," it's just that they're not paying close enough attention to what's going on. They haven't noticed something. There hasn't been the training in the subtle discerning and discrimination. So when we talk about non-conceptual awareness, when we talk about the total collapse of subject-object duality, we're talking about something extremely rare and extremely strange, and that takes quite a rare and sophisticated and profound and subtle insight to collapse, to go beyond.
But practically speaking, I want to keep this A as open-ended. I will never reach the end of A; it's open-ended, the Absorption. I just try and dissolve mind and body in this nothingness, as much as one can. And again, this forward leaning business -- again, we can configure it, configure this nothingness upright, so there's less "It's in front of me, and I'm kind of falling into it, or the mind is getting sucked into it, or trying to probe it in front of me." Or I put it where the body is. There's nothingness. Where? It's here. It's not just in front of me. It's here, too, in the space where the body used to be. Or I configure it 360 degrees around. All this can help with that sort of strong tendency to lean that happens for many people.
Okay. Depending on how one approached it -- so just like the infinite consciousness, a lot of things about working with it depend on which route one has taken into it. If one's going just from these insight ways of looking, where one considers, "This is empty of self. This is empty of anything belonging to a self" -- the this is really anything at all. It's anything that arises. And it could be the perceptions of normal sensory awareness. And one starts with that this: the perception of my body, the perception of this pain, the perception of this pīti, whatever. And one just keeps training the insight way of looking on, let's say, it starts with a pain, pain in my tummy. And I just keep looking at it with the same insight way of looking. What's going to happen? Probably the pain fades. Probably it goes through a phase where there's pīti arising, maybe sukha. Maybe it goes through some of the jhānas -- quick, so maybe the train doesn't stop there. You're just kind of seeing the station out the window, and it goes by as it's fading. And then it starts to open up into deeper senses of fading.
So the this there, from the insight way of looking, could be anything. And it might be, if one is approaching it that way, through the insight ways of looking, or sometimes, if one is approaching it other ways, from, let's say, the infinite consciousness, it could be that still other perceptions are arising. And this is quite important, because some people say, "Oh, they're not gone," and they get, "Oh, they need to disappear," and one gets into a bit of a tizzy about that -- a very subtle tizzy. [laughter] If that's happening, then what's really, really skilful is to regard them as 'no things.' They are 'not things.' In other words, the same insight way of looking is just trained on them. Now, by that point, it might be that I don't even need the whole, "It's empty"; it's just, "They're 'no thing.' This thing is a 'no thing.' It's a 'no thing.' It's a 'no thing.'" Or, "They're fabrications." Again, I need to understand what that means. This sound -- I hear the plane or whatever it is -- it's a fabrication, that sense perception. I need to understand that.
Or, "They're just perceptions," which implies -- so that's an interesting one. The insight way of looking 'just perception' has many alternative subtexts. So it can mean, and I think when some people hear it, or I've taught it in the past, take it to mean, and it's totally valuable for it to mean at one level, what it means is: "This is just awareness in substance. Whatever -- this sound, or this pain, or this thought -- it's just awareness in substance." So it's taking the insight and the perception from what? From the vastness of awareness, and it's applying it as an insight way of looking: "It's just a perception. It's just awareness in substance." But here, we need to go beyond that. And if I say, "Just a perception," it really means: "It's fabricated." It's a deeper insight. "It's just a perception," meaning, "It's just something that's fabricated, as all perceptions are."
So we might use, as our tincture, for an insight way of looking, just this very subtle 'just a perception,' for example, or something like that, whatever the tincture is. But it's important to read the small print. It's important to know, what does it mean? Because the small print will determine what happens. If I'm viewing it as 'just a perception,' but what I really mean, or what I really understand by that is "It's just the same substance as awareness," it will take me to the vastness of awareness or maybe the infinite consciousness. But if my 'just a perception' has the small print, "Just a fabricated perception -- all perceptions are fabricated," then it takes me deeper.
Or again, this is when perceptions are still arising. The nothingness is sort of there, but [there's] stuff at the edges, and one feels like, "Oh, it's not completely pure yet." One, again, could regard those perceptions as 'dukkha -- dukkha because perceptions are not peaceful,' which corresponds to the first of the Buddha's three insight ways of looking. They're dukkha. But it has to be that we're not talking about aversion there. If 'that's dukkha, that's dukkha,' and it's got irritation in it and aversion, that's not going to take me deeper. It will take me out of the whole depth, because aversion is a fabricator, and we're moving in the direction of less fabrication. So you have to be careful with these kinds of things, and these insight ways of looking, that aversion doesn't get woven in subtly. It has a very strong effect when it does that. So you're really trying to view, without aversion, that it's 'dukkha.' It's 'unsatisfactory.' It's 'dukkha because it's a perception, and perceptions are not peaceful,' as the Buddha says, but that doesn't mean there's aversion to them. So these insight ways of looking are very, very (as I said) subtle, light, agile, liquid, but very finely poised as well. Again, to the degree of their delicacy and the subtlety of the poise is the degree of their power.
Actually, what I've just described, this kind of not quite pure, peri-jhānic state, it's like in the neighbourhood of the nothingness. Or the nothingness is there, but the mind hasn't completely entered into it. Or it's kind of half in and half out, or mostly in, and there's a little bit there. This not quite pure (whatever we call it), para-jhānic state -- it may be, actually, more useful because of the opportunity to practise those ways of looking at objects and at sense perceptions and mental perceptions, right then. Again, we tend to think, "Oh, it's not going well," or we judge it dependent on how deep the absorption, etc. But the very fact that it's kind of not quite in yet gives us more opportunity to look in a certain way at these perceptions. And that may be more useful than when it's just completely, purely emptied out, because it's that, it's the ability to look at, it's the ability to sense and to relate to perceptions in these ways, with these insight ways of looking -- that's what's most liberating. That's what brings the radical change and the radical openings of view: our ability to be in the world of things, to engage things, knowing they are empty. So this kind of "It's not quite settled yet" state with regard to the realm of nothingness gives us the opportunity to practise ways of looking, right then, in this kind of in-between state that one might just as, "Ugh, haven't really got it" -- gives us the opportunity to practise ways of looking that are, in the end, actually, more powerful.
This whole thing, this whole realm of nothingness and everything that goes with it, is an experience and/or an understanding of emptiness at a very deep but not yet total or ultimate level. So when we're talking about the dimension of nothingness, we should be understanding emptiness at a very deep level from it, with it, or on our way to it. Wrapped up in the dimension of nothingness should be an understanding, at a very deep level, of emptiness. It's not the final, ultimate, deepest level of emptiness, but it's still really important. So again, we can talk about nothingness and 'no thing'-ness, but they're really just two sides of the same coin.
The advantage, I think, of working from the insight ways of looking (as the Buddha described, and as we went through very briefly there, and is in a lot more detail in Seeing That Frees) -- the advantage of working that way is because those insights get consolidated more. So especially number (2) and (3) -- "This is empty of a self or of what belongs to a self," "I am not anything belonging to anyone anywhere. Nor is there anything belonging to me in anyone anywhere" -- these ones are empowering a view of emptiness with regard to phenomena, the phenomena of the world, the phenomena of our life.
The first one: "Perceptions aren't peaceful. Let me go for something without perceptions, where there's more peace." Again, you can hear the danger of dualism there, right? You can hear the danger of a dualistic attachment. In a way, what I've just said, we could say the samādhi here -- in other words, how absorbed am I in this state? -- is actually less valuable than the insight, you could say. The degree of my absorption, etc., into this state may be less valuable than the insight that comes from the state or on my way to it, or around it, or in the after-effects. I would say that the insight is actually more important than the degree of samādhi here. So 'no thing,' or the emptiness of things, and the understanding of the 'no thing'-ness of things, of the absence of inherent existence of things, that really, ultimately, there are no things, the understanding of that while we're perceiving things -- this is, as I said, immensely liberating, so freeing in its potential. It's a very profound understanding, and it has different levels to it, lots of different levels to it, at least the way I would teach it. So an understanding, the same understanding of 'no thing'-ness at deeper and deeper levels -- that's the usual way I would teach emptiness, is you just kind of go one level, consolidate that, and then to a whole other level of what the same thing means, what it means to say something is empty, what it means to say there are no things.
But even at not such a profound level, it can be enormously liberating, so much potency of potential freedom there. When there's no thing, when we begin to sense that or be able to see, "There is no thing here, really," then there's the possibility that we can be with something with either no or much less sense of imprisonment with regard to that thing, much less sense or no sense of imprisonment in, with, or by any form, whether that form is a relationship one feels claustrophobic in, whether it's a work situation that one feels hampered by, stuck in, constricted by, whether it's any kind of situation, or a social situation, or an ongoing social construction that one finds oneself in, whether it's an illness, whether it's a retreat -- the bonds of finitude. Where there's finitude, we can feel imprisoned by those edges in all kinds of ways. You just have to ponder this and actually see: where there's a thing, there's the possibility of imprisonment in relation to, with, by, in that thing. So understanding this 'no thing'-ness, being able to relate to a thing, see a thing, be in a thing (I'm using 'thing,' obviously, in a very broad sense now), to be able to see that way and know its 'no thing'-ness can open up tremendous freedom, the end of a sense of imprisonment. One is free. The bars are still there. One is free.
Sometimes, you used to say to people, years ago, sometimes it's really good, like, for example, in walking meditation, and say, "Well, can't I just go for a walk? Same thing. I'll walk. I'll do it mindfully." And I used to say, "No, walk up and down, and up and down, and up and down. You have a beginning, and you have an end -- closed form." And then, sometimes I would say to people, "And do a walking meditation period for six hours or more -- six, seven, eight hours. Walk, walk, walk until you see the illusion of the closedness of that form." Of course, I have to incline my mind to that insight. Here I'm imprisoned. I can't be -- I'm not free to go anywhere. I'm just walking up and down in this body until one sees through -- sees through the form, sees through any sense of imprisonment in that form, sees the emptiness of walking.
So what we're talking about here applies to so many other things, so many forms, so many structures, so many imprisonments. It's an emptiness insight, and it's related to this 'no thing'-ness business of the seventh jhāna. And as I said, there are many different levels of this. But even at a more conventional level, we can (as I said), if I don't know what all this means, just walk. Just, for example, do your walking meditation, hours and hours and hours, until you see through what looks like a restricted form, and you're free.
So the samādhi, as I said, may be less valuable than the insight here. And there's a way, as we've been talking about, the jhāna should bring certain insights. It will bring certain insights when one goes into this level, the dimension of nothingness. It should bring certain insights, but certainly the insight ways of looking will deliver the jhāna. So the causality, again, works both ways. But if I go, if I enter this jhāna and this dimension of nothingness, if I go via the insight ways of looking, it will tend to reinforce those insights more. I will learn those insights more, because they've been part of how I've got there as well. So in the jhāna, as I said, you can have a sense of nothingness and a sense of 'no thing'-ness, and it can be slightly different. I mean, the actual jhāna is really a sense of nothingness. The insight is of 'no thing'-ness. It's the latter, the sense of 'no thing'-ness, the recognition of 'no thing'-ness that's most important for insight. Even if I (and this is an interesting one) just have an experience of nothingness, deep nothingness, to me, it should lead to the insights that the Buddha is talking about -- emptiness of phenomenal self, etc. It should lead to the insight that "There are no things, really."
But again, the power of conceptual framework -- because I've heard and read people talk about this, this state, and they seem to have very good absorption into it, but they don't seem to have sucked the juice from it, in terms of the most relevant and the deepest insight from it. So all very well, the absorption is good and fantastic, and you can hold your mind there, but where's the liberating insight from it? So it could be, again, that because of a conceptual framework which isn't relating these things to emptiness, there's actually a stranglehold on the growth of insight. It may be that the force of the jhānic experience anyway opens that, but I do know cases where that's not the case, and to me, it points, again, to the hidden power of conceptual frameworks, and how important it is to pay attention to conceptual frameworks, and just see: are we adopting and using and relying on the most powerful conceptual frameworks, the ones that make the most sense, the ones that point in the right direction? Are we picking the right thing from the fruit tree? Or are walking away with something else, like a twig or something, and not an apple?
So the view, then, that comes, that becomes available, and the understanding, and also the after-effect on perception here, is -- one moves in the world afterwards, and one's clearly moving in a world of things, but they are, at the same time, felt and seen to be, in some very mysterious way, not things. It's a thing and it's not a thing, and it's hard to put that into language. But one way of saying that is, these understandings and these perception attainments -- they don't make us dysfunctional in the world, like I'm now unable to drink water because I can't sense a thing there. Of course I can sense a thing. But I can also sense it as not a thing.
No thing -- it's, as I said, related to emptiness. It does not mean impermanence. Emptiness is way beyond impermanence, and when we talk about the 'no thing'-ness of things, we're not saying, "There's not really a glass of water here, or there's not really a glass here, there's not really water here. What there are is the really, really rapid arising and passing of either perceptions or atoms," or whatever it is. That's impermanence. It might be super-fast impermanence. That's not emptiness. So that would be an example. If I took the insight of rapid impermanence from all this business of 'no thing'-ness and this jhāna, I would be taking, I don't know, a twig from the apple tree, and not the apple. No thing, emptiness -- this is much, much deeper, much more powerfully liberating than impermanence.
So again, there are certain recurrent themes through all this, and still, with this level of opening and this mystical kind of revelation, really, it's still brings mettā. Mettā comes from it, just like all the other jhānas. The mettā here [is] luscious, profound, flavoured with the depth of mystery, and flavoured with the depth of the mystery of 'no thing'-ness, of thing-ness and 'no thing'-ness at the same time, of emptiness -- mettā at a whole other level. Again, we can ask: why mettā? Everything's disappearing. There's no thing. But there's also, then, less emphasis on the differences. There's certainly less emphasis on this self, and the interests of the self, and the selfish interests of this self over and above others.
But even more, again, there's oneness. Just like the other arūpa-jhānas that we've talked about -- oneness, another whole level of oneness, another whole level of mystical oneness opens up with these perceptions. So we had the oneness of materiality, this sort of 'woven together'-ness of our bodies, of our matter, of all matter, with all matter in the universe. We had the oneness of awareness from the infinite consciousness, the mysterious oneness of our consciousnesses. And here we have a kind of oneness of essence or substance, but that essence is a kind of essence of emptiness. I use 'essence' almost in inverted commas. The substance of all beings and all things, the substance of all phenomena, the essence of all beings and all phenomena is recognized, is felt to be emptiness. But we have to use that word 'essence' a little carefully. And that's a whole other level of mystical oneness that the heart opens to. It's emptiness understood at a certain level there, or a certain bandwidth of levels pertaining to the seventh jhāna. So mettā comes, as we would expect by now, and a further opening of oneness.
Just to linger on the mettā piece, later, after you've developed this for a while, and also with the development of other emptiness practices, again, we can make cocktails. So we can mix, perhaps, certain brahmavihāra practices -- maybe mettā or karuṇā, compassion practice -- with, for instance, this sense of 'no thing'-ness or emptiness. There is, as we talked about, the spectrum of fading, spectrum of unfabricating. And with practice, it's possible to play with perception, which is, again, one way of construing everything that we're doing, one way of construing what the whole Dharma is. We're playing with perception. And play along that spectrum of fading, so that self and other fade to a great degree, and phenomena as well. There's a partial fading of this being or that being, who one is then directing mettā towards. They become extremely insubstantial, barely there, because they're faded. They're just on the cusp of completely fading out, and diaphanous there. They're on the verge of fading. But still they're there as an object, as a person.
So there's a knowing that they're empty -- they're empty of inherent existence. And experientially, that knowing of their emptiness is empowering an insight way of looking, which is empowering the fading, down to a point where they're just kind of 'appearing,' teetering on the edge -- and then the love, and then practising the mettā or the karuṇā towards this empty person, balanced somewhere on a cusp of fading and appearance. So they're barely there. They're appearing, but they're barely there. They're barely formed. They're half-faded, yet they're distinct. They're just about distinct as this person or that person, etc. And doing that, and then adding into this alchemical mix, adding your mettā towards this person, or your karuṇā towards this person, empowers the mettā or the karuṇā to a whole other level. And some people think, "Well, if someone's empty, surely I'm not going to have mettā, because they're empty, right?" But no. If you actually practise it, it takes the love and the compassion to a whole other level, a whole other empowerment.
And actually, this kind of thing, playing with the spectrum of fading through an insight way of looking, making cocktails, etc. -- there are all kinds of options that start opening up, all kinds of games we can play and be very creative here, all kinds of beauty and wonder that can open up in this territory. In a way, one could say this is the territory, now, of tantric practice or Vajrayāna, ideally, I would say. It comes from this knowing of emptiness, this understanding of emptiness, and this ability to actually control, if you like, or play with perception to a certain degree, so that things don't just completely fade, and then I can't do anything -- there's nothing, because everything's completely gone. But nor are they, nor are things or beings reified and solid. They're in this diaphanous, divine, empty yet appearing, on the cusp of fading yet appearing -- they're in that place, and it's a magical place, and it's a place of potent magic.
In the Mahāyāna teachings, it's said that only a Buddha -- not an arahant, not a fully enlightened person in the Theravādan teachings -- only a Buddha, a complete Buddha can both fully view something or someone as 'empty' at the same time that they still perceive that thing or that someone, still perceive them as someone or something. For all the rest of us, when I view X or Y, or this person or that person, or this phenomenon or that phenomenon as 'empty' -- again, that makes sense to me what it means, and I'm applying it in this agile, subtle way, I'm viewing this as 'empty' -- that thing will disappear. It will fade. Only a Buddha can fully view something as 'empty' and still perceive it. That's a core and fundamental but not very well-known Mahāyāna teaching, and it has enormous implications. So one way of construing what one's doing when you're practising Vajrayāna visualization practices and seeing appearances as divine (some of you will never have heard of this; some of you will have) is: you're mimicking, you're deliberately mimicking the mind of a Buddha, and that capacity of a Buddha to do that just, to understand and view something as empty at the same time you're actually perceiving it, without it completely fading, so that Vajrayāna and that kind of practice is just this pretend mimicking of being a Buddha. And if you do that enough, that's one way to become a Buddha: you just imitate a Buddha, and then you become a Buddha. That's all Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna teaching; I'm just mentioning it.
But a couple of things from that. And they're significant. Well, I think that's very significant in all kinds of ways, and certainly as practice options, hugely significant. And immensely beautiful playgrounds open up, immensely beautiful realms and possibilities open up there. But there are a couple of points I want to draw out from what I've just been talking about. One is about this malleability of perception with the emptiness and the fading. I'll come back to that.
The other, again, is revisiting our theme of desire. And we said there are these four iddhipādā that the Buddha talked about, and desire is one of them. And then we keep touching on it in this retreat. And one of the things I said, and I've said it now, I've pulled it out as something to talk about twice, and a third time now at least, I think, is: again, what is it exactly I'm desiring from practice? And what exactly is the mix of desires, the precise mix of my desires that brings me to practice, that keeps me practising, that takes me to retreats, or whatever it is? What's in there?
What those desires are has a tremendous influence on then what unfolds -- let's say, on a retreat or in your practice or in your life. So if one of those desires, or even the main desire for practice, is to open my heart, and for the heart to be touched, and that's really what takes me to practice, and that's maybe what brings me on a jhāna retreat, somehow, that may seem a bit of a strange choice of retreat. You know, if you want that, why would you choose a jhāna retreat, necessarily? And again, talking about this, the influence of exactly what it is that I desire, the influence of that on what unfolds, and what becomes possible, because if that's my primary intention -- it may be conscious; it may be semi-conscious -- then it's probably not enough to sustain the intention for jhānas and for jhāna practice. I mean, it's a wonderful intention, but it's probably not enough to actually show up, hour after hour, on a retreat like this or a longer jhāna retreat, to actually sustain: this is what I'm doing. I'm not getting distracted. This is the primary thing I'm doing. I'm occasionally doing something else, but this is what I'm doing. We've talked over and over about just how hard that is to sustain that intention, and also just how important it is to sustain that intention, because without it sustaining, things won't open up. They'll open up in a very limited way, but they won't unfold to these kinds of depth, or any real jhānic depths. Hard to sustain that, difficult to sustain that intention, a single intention like that. But if my primary thing that I'm looking for or wanting from practice is the heart to be touched or opened, then as I said, it's probably not enough to sustain that intention. It's probably not enough to keep working and playing, for instance, in the ways that we've been taught, because I'm actually interested in something else. It's hard to see the connection, and I'll be drawn to other things, because they're more in line, or they're more obviously in line with my desire.
So this might seem a strange thing to say at this point of the retreat, but again, partly I'm talking to the recordings when I talk. But there's a more general principle which applies anyway, and I want to really reinforce that general principle. If I'm interested in any deep practice, developing any deep practice -- jhānas, emptiness, whatever it is, then I really have to understand (I'm saying it again) desire. And I have to understand my relationship with desire, and that has to be authentic. And I have to understand what I tend to do or not do with desire. And I have to understand what the influences are of different desires, and all of that, which is just repeating what I've said before. So it's this general principle that is really important. If there was someone listening to the recordings, who starts listening, let's say, to the recordings from this retreat, but really what they're mostly wanting is open-heartedness and for their heart to be touched or something -- which may not even be something they've articulated consciously to themself -- it's probably the case that they will have given up listening to the recordings by now. But the general principle is really important -- what we're talking about, about desire and really being clear about what the desires are. So that's one thing.
The second thing, I think, again, is really important, because it is true -- most of you will have got this sense: it is true that the jhānas open the heart. Can I say that now, and you feel that that's ...? Yeah? It should be. You should have a real sense of like, "Wow." This really has an impact on the heart, the capacity of the heart to be touched, the capacity of the heart to hold ranges and depths and beauties of emotion, and also difficult emotion, and all that. Jhānas do open the heart enormously, in ways and at levels that perhaps -- before really engaging in such practices, and staying with them and pursuing, and kind of, okay, staying with the intention and working in these ways -- would've been undreamed of, the way the heart opened. It would never have occurred to us that the heart could open in such ways, or at such levels.
Again, though, again, if (consciously or semi-consciously) I have a conception or a conceptual framework or an idea or an image of what 'heart-opening,' 'love,' or even 'sensitivity' is one word that we've been using, if I have an idea, an image, a notion, a conception of what those things mean ('heart-opening,' 'love,' 'sensitivity,' for example), what they mean, what they look like, what they involve, what they need, if my idea is limited, then it might be that there is a limited range and possibility and depth of heart-opening, because my very conception -- even it's semi-conscious -- is limiting what's possible for the heart. It's limiting the heart-opening that's possible. One remains confined in the presupposed limits. Again, they weren't even conscious, perhaps.
In fact, the danger is even more, and especially so, when we think: "But I just want my heart to open. I'm not really into a conceptual framework. I'm not really a conceptual person. I'm just kind of open, because I want my heart to be open, so I keep my mind open." But actually it's not: there's an idea there. There's a limit. There's an idea and image and notion of what 'heart-opening' or 'being touched' or whatever means, involves, needs, looks like. And that limited idea is limiting what's actually possible.
So heart-opening is endless, I would say. It's endless. There's no end to heart-opening. There's no end. It's endless in terms of what it is, and also what it includes and what it involves. It's endless if we let it be endless, meaning if we let the heart open, but also if we let the mind be not limited in terms of what it means.
Again, the power of conception, the power of conceptual frameworks, the power of notions and ideas, conscious or unconscious -- it's enormous, really, really enormous. This is something to really explore. Again, we can talk about jhānas and da-da-da, but there are other issues, like desire and idea or conception, that have power, and have determinative power over much, much more than we recognize. And they have determinative power over what will open for us as human beings, or what remains closed. We don't even understand: why is it remaining closed? Or we don't even recognize it remains closed, until we hear other people talking about it, thinking, "Oh. Why haven't I had that experience?"
Okay, last thing, relating back to the emptiness. We talked about the mettā and the love, and the desire, and again, coming back to our theme of malleability of perception. So it should be, I would say, that, let's say, to the degree that one has realized the emptiness of things -- and remember, that's a spectrum; it's really a spectrum. So we're talking about -- the emptiness of things can be realized at a very everyday, not-big-deal level, and it's still really, really important, and it can be realized all the way down, incredibly deep, [and] everything in between. But that realization of the emptiness of things, or the 'no thing'-ness of things -- for many people, it legitimizes and opens up the possibilities for playing with perception even more, for the malleability of perception. So in the opening talk, I said something, just recognizing and wanting to sort of acknowledge, together and out loud, the fact that I knew that many of you have been, for instance, very active working in activism of different sorts recently, and particularly with activism around climate change, and species loss, and the environment, and this kind of thing, and arrived at the retreat very tired from all that, and the craziness of, if you were in XR, rebellions and things -- tired, wired, and grieving. So that was a possibility. And someone who did indeed arrive at the retreat, after lots of dedicated activism, wired, tired, and grieving, left a beautiful note the other day. So I'm going to read it to you, and then say a few things about it. She says:
This morning [so this is on, you know, wired, tired, and grieving from all that activism, and then on this retreat, and then], I decided to walk in sukha [okay, so, walk with the primary nimitta of the second jhāna], being surrounded and welcomed by it rather than walking in a sukha bubble of my energy body.
So the usual instruction has been to keep the sukha, if we're doing sukha, if you're going for a walk, keep it in the energy body bubble space, right? She said, "I tried something different. I want to walk surrounded by it rather than just in the energy bubble." Then it says:
For many months, I found it nearly impossible to enjoy being in nature, although I was in amazing places in the natural world. I mainly perceived it [perceived nature] as wounded, deeply ailing, dying, etc. -- a perception that is not only very painful, but also, as I was very aware of, not always helpful or sustainable for the being. This morning, all was radiating or being an expression or manifestation of happiness. The very fabric of the cosmos was sukha. This was very beautiful and healing. Yet what was even more profound, and made me cry, was that not only was all an expression of sukha, but that the cosmos (or all, or it?) was delighted and happy at my activism. No matter how flawed, mad, confused it may be [the activism] at times, it [the cosmos, the world, the nature] rejoiced in it, no matter what the outcome.
I just want to analyse this a little bit -- so, beautiful experience, very healing. There's the jhānic familiarity, in this case with the second jhāna, and there's at least some degree of mastery, maybe complete, or some degree, because we said the walking with the sukha is part of the elements of mastery. Jhānic familiarity, some degree of mastery, and then the choice, deliberately, not to contain it to the energy body, as would be relevant to the second jhāna, but to allow it to become huge and cosmic, if you like.
So the distinction I want to make here is one that pertains to Soulmaking Dharma, etc. In Soulmaking Dharma, we have this word 'cosmopoesis,' which really pertains, which really means ('cosmo,' 'cosmos,' and 'poiesis') a making or creating or an art of perceiving the cosmos a certain way, of sensing the cosmos a certain way. So there came here a cosmopoesis at first, but that cosmopoesis wasn't fully imaginal, or it could be that there's a cosmos, let's say -- I'm not sure quite what the order or the pacing [was] of how things unfolded here. It doesn't matter. The point I want to make is, we can have a cosmopoesis, and as someone shared in a note the other day, the fabric of the universe being joy. So here's the fabric of the universe being sukha. Same -- there's a cosmopoesis.
But we can have a cosmopoesis that's not fully imaginal. It's just a cosmopoesis; it's an after-effect of perception; it's a malleability of perception on what the sense of the cosmos is. Then, in this report, that cosmopoesis becomes more imaginal. Why? What's the difference? One of the differences is, the self gets drawn into the soulmaking dynamic. It's not just the universe has its fabric of joy, delightful as that is, incredibly beautiful, mystical, lovely experience as that is. When it gets to being imaginal, when we get into soulmaking territory, something else starts to happen, and the self gets drawn into the soulmaking dynamic. The self becomes image to some extent. And then from that, other elements of -- we talk about the 'lattice,' the lattice of the imaginal, the nodes, the different elements of the imaginal will start to get drawn in, because the self has become imaginal. And that's very different from an experience where there's joy, the cosmos is joy, its essence, its substance is joy, but the self is not really drawn into the experience. It's prominent, it's enjoying it, it's touched by it, but it hasn't become personal in that way. So one of the moves, one of the occurrences that sends it then into imaginal territory (and there's not really a black-and-white division, like all these things with jhānas) is the becoming imaginal of the self. It's not just the object, it's not just the world, but self as well.
And back to fantasies of the path, what supports our desire, what supports our intention, etc. Here, then, is the possibility: an image opened up that involved the image of the self and of nature and of the cosmos -- both. Self, other, world became imaginal, but in a way, the potential here for that very image, and the delight and the happiness and the rejoicing in her activism, in the narrative of the self, in the dedication, and even the willingness of the self to do this work, mad as it seemed, ineffectual as it seemed, difficult as it seemed, painful as it seemed -- the narrative and the dukkha of the self become image. They get drawn into the image. It's different than just a cosmopoesis, the fabric of the cosmos becoming joy or whatever, and the self remains very quiet, very much in the background. It's a different level.
But that possibility then can become immensely helpful in the long term, for instance, as a fantasy, as an image that really ramps up the support long term for working at difficult things, working through difficult times, whatever it is. If you're on a retreat, and it's difficult, what's the fantasy of the path we've talked about? What's the view? In this case it's activism. No matter what the outcome, the blessings of when things get imaginal that way is they get liberated. Because of the eternality of the imaginal territory, they get liberated from a dependency on the outcome. So one's free to work, free to be with the pain of that, supported by the beauty and the soulfulness and the depth of the fantasy that touches the self, and not so hampered by and worried by and limited by what the outcome might be. And yet one still is working full out for it, but supported by this whole other dimension of being, the imaginal sense. And then this support, in the long term, to be able to sustain one's soul-desires, one's deep desires, through the difficult, through the long term, without the heart having to close, without the heart having to close to grief, to pain, to possible failure and the threat of possible failure.
So it's not a soulmaking retreat, but I wanted to say this, because again, desire, and understanding desire, and understanding that has a lot to do with being able to open up to what we want to open up to, being able to do what we set out to do, and sustain that. And there's also this connection with the malleability of perception (we've talked about it from the beginning of this retreat) and this realm of 'no thing'-ness. When we talk about the emptiness of things, as I said, the legitimacy and the possibility of the malleability of perception just open up even more, goes to a whole other level. So, relevant in a few ways.
Okay. Let's have some quiet time together.
[silence]
Okay. Thank you, everybody. Time for tea. Enjoy.
