Lojong: mind training. Macclesfield 12.2006

December 8-9th, 2006. James Low teaching on lojong, how the mind functions and how to clarify confusion when it arises, in Macclesfield, UK.

The Lojong teachings started in Tibet in the eleventh century of the Christian Era, and were based on the Mayahana principle of developing wisdom and compassion, particularly on the notion of taking the Bodhisattva vow to focus one’s existence on the liberation of all beings. They were a key oral teaching in the early Kadampa school, which is in many ways the forerunner of the modern Gelugpa school.

‘Lo’ in Lojong means intellect, the capacity of the mind to have a reflective clarity to see for oneself what is going on, and ‘jong’ means to develop, or to purify. So it’s really about developing and integrating an observing capacity and an executive capacity. That is to say, being able to see how one is moving or situating oneself in relation to internal and external experience, and then mobilising oneself in a way that will make a difference. To undertake such a profound challenge to one’s own self-centredness and selfishness, is to engage in a great deal of struggle.

The Bodhisattva notion is really very radical. It says that the most important thing is for all beings to awaken, and my role in relation to that is to become a servant of these beings. In other words the purpose of my existence is nothing other than servitude, I voluntarily go into servitude for the sake of others.

In our time this is an incredibly radical idea; we live in a time of extreme self-definition, of people wanting to make their lives on their own terms, people finding ordinary family duties and responsibilities to be very onerous, let alone the notion that you could tilt your energy out in duty, in servitude for the well being of all others. So this aspiration, which carries with it a line of intentionality, is used as a kind of marker that lets us see the ordinary flow of our intentionality. I will explain more precisely what I mean by this.

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Okay so good morning here we are all  ready for business where business is   pleasure um maybe we start uh  just by some quiet sitting just   allowing ourselves to arrive fully  in our body using the breath as a support so well make sure that you’re skeleton  supporting you properly relaxing your muscles  

And just allow your attention to focus on  the breath flowing in and out very gently   and we just sit quietly like that for  a while there’s nothing else to focus   on or worry about just quietly  being with the pulse of of your existence

Okay so the uh topic that we have  for today and tomorrow morning   is uh way of developing the clarity  of the mind can you find a place to sit so we look a little bit at uh ideas in  a Tibetan it’s called in tibetan lojong and  

This is a system of approaching how the mind  functions and how one might clarify the ways   in which confusion arises what I want to do is to  show how this stands in relation to the general  

Uh understanding of zen zen and loong are rather  different but they can be used in harmony La in   the loong means intellect it means the capacity  of the mind to have a reflective clarity to see   what’s going on for oneself and Jong simply  means to develop or to purify so it’s really  

About developing an integration of an observing  capacity and an executive capacity that is to   say to be able to see how one is moving or  situating oneself in relation to internal   and external experience and then how to mobilize  oneself in a way that will make a difference with

That the Lo Jong tradition in Tibetan Buddhism  comes largely through the early uh group in the   new translation uh system called the kadas  and they are many ways the forerunners of   the modern gupa groupings these words may mean  something to you and they may not um we’ll get  

To the heart of the matter soon enough but I just  set out that frame that was a tradition that was   starting in Tibet in about the 10th Century of  the Christian era it was a tradition based on   the Mahayana principle of developing wisdom and  compassion particularly uh a notion of taking a  

Bodhak for focusing one’s existence on the  liberation of all beings and that in order   to take up such a profound ch challenge to one’s  own self-centeredness and selfishness one had to   engage in a great deal of struggle so it’s a in  a sense it’s a model of mental struggle in which  

One becomes more aware of one’s Tendencies  Tendencies of self- protection Tendencies of   uh ignoring the state of others of not wanting  to be interrupted by the way in which the very   existence of other people places a demand on  ourselves so the bodis SATA notion is really  

Very radical it says the most important thing is  that all beings awaken and my role in relation   to that is to become a servant of these beings  so that the purpose of my existence is nothing  

Other than servitude and in many of the texts from  Shanti DEA and many of the writers they use the   notion of I voluntarily go into servitude for the  sake of others in our time this is an incredibly  

Radical idea we live in a time of extreme self-de  of people wanting to make their lives on their own   terms people finding ordinary family duties and  responsibilities to be very honorous let alone   the notion that you could tilt your energy out  in Duty in servitude for the well-being of all

Others so this aspiration which carries with it  a line of intentionality is used as a kind of   uh marker that lets us see the ordinary flow of  our intentionality and I explain more precisely   what I mean by this Consciousness our ordinary  Consciousness is always engaged in activity it  

Arises as a gesture toward something we hear  a sound that is to say our consciousness of   sound arises towards or with the manifestation  of the objective sound itself if there is no   particular sound around the sound Consciousness  is not arising if there’s no particular taste  

Around The Taste Consciousness is not arising  from the Buddhist point of view it’s not that   there is a permanent Readiness to taste things  it’s that taste Consciousness requires an object   so a lot of the time if you’re sitting here maybe  listening or daydreaming whatever you’re not very  

Aware of what’s happening in your mouth and then  all of a sudden you have a sense of it that the   sense of taste requires an object you have to be  tasting something you have to be hearing something  

That is to say could say all mental events are  transitive they take an object even at times when   we appear to be doing something quite simple like  relaxing I’m just relaxing what are you relaxing   not relaxing anything I’m just relaxing uh we  are are actually relaxing something because our  

Mind if we start to observe what happens even  in states of repose we’re on about something   Consciousness is structured dialogically there  is always a subject and object component so this   is a very important as a Buddhist understanding  if we don’t really get a handle on this a lot of  

The Buddhist practice doesn’t make any any sense  because what it’s saying is that I me myself is   never solitary there is no possibility of being  an autonomous agent uh the notion of willpower of   of me being in myself and then moving out towards  the world or towards other people is an illusion  

That I am constituted in relation to others the  other is always with me I do not exist apart   from the field of my experience so that a great  deal of the conceptualization that we have about   ourself is quite wrong it’s it’s a a delusion an  illusion we wander around in our lives imagining  

I am going to do this I am going to do that as if  we are moving out from some stable safe place and   exerting a choice a choice which perhaps defines  who we are I don’t like to wear the color green I  

Like to wear the color blue so that’s who I am and  when I go to the shops I know what I want and that   knowing what I want is a property inherent in me  it is my property from this traditional Buddhist  

Point of view that would be fallacious it appears  to be like that but actually our tilting and our   Tendencies are prefigured by patterns which are  established in previous lives we are born already   with a repertoire of tilings and adjustments  we’re drawn towards some things and not towards  

Others and this gestural movement of being drawn  towards this this already being off balance being   for something in particular and not for something  else this is how our existence reveals itself not   as something apart but always already involved  and as we start to recognize that we’re always  

Already caught up in in the world with something  or other the question not doesn’t be ceases to   be one of shall I or shant I but rather how can I  maintain a sense of balance in the midst of this  

Flow of experience which I cannot stop it’s one of  the things we start to see when we do meditation   practice that the flow of thoughts feeling and  sensation is ceaseless it it never comes to an end  

This is what existence is it’s a flow and we are  in the flow and we are of that flow so to imagine   that you’re on the bank of the river making a  having a choice whether you jump in or not is  

An illusion the bank of the river is also moving  what looks like the bank of the river is just a   big log in the middle of the Mississippi you’re  floating down with Mark Twain you know there’s  

Nowhere to hide and so it’s about recognizing  and finding way of being at home in the dynamic   flow of experience and both Zen and L Jong have  quite a lot to say about this so at the heart of   experience is intentionality intentionality is a  very important topic in uh modern psychology also  

In modern philosophy um through phenomenologists  like husel and Mer ponti through other critical   thinkers like Bakin a sense that somehow we have  an intention and that that intention defines our   frame of reference and it’s very particular our  intentionality is embodied so if I hear a sound  

Out on the road and I turn towards that sound my  lived experience is now of what is there now I   hear a cough over here and I tilt over towards  that so my intention is going with is tracking  

And is arising in in relation to phenomena as  they manifest and in each of these turns I am   resituated in my being that’s why daily life  is so exhausting because we are being tilted   around Moment by moment as we respond to what’s  going on through the senses Our intention is to  

Check out what’s going on because we have to  be about something con Consciousness is always   about something we’re always thinking about  something feeling something having a sensation   something arises for us this is the duality of our  experience a subject and an object sometimes the  

Object is clearly outside like a car driving by  and we think here I am in this room aware of a car   driving by and sometimes the object is something  inside ourselves and some of the internal States  

Subject and object run very closely together and  they can feel as if they are all of a piece for an   example you might have a mood a mood of sadness a  mood of depression a mood of elation that tends to  

Be a very fused kind of State in which it seems  to be just one thing I am happy there’s now the   state which I am now merged in or someone might  have an Impulse I’m so angry about this I want  

To smash something and I just abandon myself into  that urge and I break something in that moment it   appears that the subject is unimpeded in its flow  into the impulse which is actually something it’s   aware of and of course we would say that that’s  when people become very dangerous when they uh  

Find themselves unable to or are unwilling to  stand apart from the temptation of Confluence   of merging into an Impulse because we’re always  um tempted by lots of impulses impulses to be   lazy to be stupid to get lost sexually through  alcohol through gambling people throw their lives  

In all sorts of ways but if one really looks  Into the Heart of an Impulse a mood there is   still a subject object movement it’s always very  interesting if one can help people to observe   what it’s like to be profoundly depressed because  actually someone has always been depressed who’s  

Depressed I am what’s your depression like I don’t  know I’m just depressed well you are depressed yes   I am just depressed you don’t understand you  don’t know what it’s like but actually if you   can get closer to the person they start to be  able to see that even when they’re profoundly  

In it they are in something that is to say  something is happening for me and because   depression itself is a flow of experience as  is everything Moment by moment it’s changing   there are subtle nuanced ways in which subject and  object are interplaying and redefining each other  

This is a a central notion and it’s something  that it’s really worth inspecting and we’ll do   some meditation to help us do that later but to to  really be able to see that we are never apart from Duality and this has iCal implications  for how we think about the

Mind this Duality means that there is no boundary  or border between subject and object that subject   and object are much more like an infinity loop  they’re just ceaselessly interacting it’s a   co-created system a co-emergence a CO Co creation  rather than two entities standing in relationship  

So if you have a friend and you think this is my  friend here is my friend my friend is called Tom   hello I’d like you to meet Tom Tom is my friend I  stand in relation to Tom Tom is separate from me  

But what is the toess of this Tom lots of things  about Tom you will never know maybe he’s your best   friend you might have been at school with Tom but  there will always be things about Tom’s experience  

That you have no access to and the Tom that you  describe to another friend oh I saw Tom last night   his Life’s a bit difficult at the moment he’s  doing this he’s doing that these are elaborations  

Confections ways in which you edit and create a  narrative about this person as if this person was   somebody who could be defined but when you hang  out with Tom Tom’s shifting and changing Tom says   one word then Tom says another word he doesn’t  just say one word all evening he says lots and  

Lots of words so then you meet Mary and Mary says  how did you go on with Tom last night oh it was   quite nice what did you talk about well we talked  about this we talked about this what was actually  

Going on you can’t replicate our existence is  ungraspable it’s not a thing that you can box   and keep now we have a wonderful video machine so  we can look again at this moment in history but   this moment is not going to be in that machine  because this moment that we experience together  

Is unbelievable inexplicable incomprehensible  do you imagine in this room with just our few   people how many different Sensations are going  on how many kinds of emotions how many kind of   thoughts memories and so on are flitting by the  infinite complexity of our lived experience which  

We then in order to communicate reduce to little  shaped pieces little set pieces like a sort of   chess game but our lived experience is not like  that and so we always have two main possibilities  

One is to try to find a way to be at home in the  richness of complexity and to experience the way   in which one doesn’t need to know what’s going  on in order to have a rich and full life that  

Knowledge in the sense of a rational overview a  comprehension and understanding a stabilization   of the situation is very uh overrated actually  we’re just bopping along and the main thing   about life is hanging in there and being where the  action is and the action is always just whatever’s  

Going on what can you say about it not much or  a lot there are so many books now but books are   not the thing itself we know this and yet we get  very frightened because we feel somehow we should  

Be able to give an account of ourselves what’s  the value of your existence who are you what are   you worth why shouldn’t I shoot you in the head  well I’m quite a nice person and I do this and  

I do that and we’ve got our CV we’ve got a way  of showing our existence through an arithmetic   tabulation a building up of events a summative  view this is who I am our actual experiences   radically different from this in the Zen tradition  uh which is a tradition uh concerned with directly  

Experiencing our own nature we’re concerned more  with spontaneity in the L Jong tradition we’re   concerned more with trying to improve the quality  of the contents of our mind so one is about trying   to understand the kind of dynamic of existence  itself and the other is trying to make a better  

Quality of furniture in your mind if the chairs  in your mind are very comfortable then you will   be able to offer Hospitality to more people  if your house is a tip you don’t really want  

People popping by in the same way with your mind  if you’re full of shit if you’re full of anger and   irritation and selfishness it’s quite different  difficult to hang out with other people you want   to have a an old style front parlor a facade  a a false self to convince other people that  

You’re doing better than you are but if you really  want to give people a heartfelt welcome you have   to have a sense that your heart is a reasonably  healthy place that it’s nothing to be ashamed of  

And that’s the essential movement of the body  Safa path to try to shift the content of one’s   mind so that one feels able to open oneself in  generosity towards others therefore things that   we might regard as unhelpful or impolite jealousy  pride and so on become uh phenomena that we should  

Try to uh shift and change so very important to  try to see the difference between these two one   view is seeing the infinite Dynamic flow of  experience an experience which is ungraspable   which when you try to uh find out what it is it  has already left in Zen tradition this is called  

The self- Liberation of all phenomena that  we don’t need to be busy adjusting our mind   because whatever is in your mind whatever  is your experience will vanish just by itself just be gone you woke up this morning you  had some breakfast or a cup of tea or something  

And that time is gone we started just after 10:00  and 10:00 is gone time’s moving on what we were   doing at 10:00 is no longer what’s happening  we didn’t need to say for God’s sake stop stop   10:00 I can’t bear 10:00 anymore 10:00 just  went by itself and all the king’s horses and  

All the king’s men couldn’t bring 10:00 back  again life is like that the most liberating   of all the Buddhist teachings is impermanence and  impermanence is not some mystical formulation it’s   something that’s there in front of your nose 24  hours a day it’s not a concept it is the actual  

Lived quality of our existence that everything  is a ceaseless flow there is nothing to grasp   what we grasp are Concepts Concepts grasp Concepts  and create the illusion of a stabilized field of experience I am here in mfield I have  been in mfield before so I I am back in

Mfield where is this mfield it’s in England  it’s quite near Manchester so what is Manchester   Manchester is a name let’s go to Manchester  okay where do you want to go in Manchester   I don’t want to go in Manchester I just want to  go to Manchester but you can’t go to Manchester  

You have to go into Manchester because where is  Manchester where is mfield are we in mfield are we   really in mfield is there any bit of mfield that  is more mfield than this street where is it these  

Are Concepts mfield is a set of Notions which can  be built up some people will know the history of   mfield they might know the history of this street  their Auntie might have lived in this street when  

They were growing up their grandfather might have  worked in a factory around the corner so for them   mles field will be rolent with associations  that is to say affectively enriched Concepts   but mfield per se how will you grasp it you can  apply exactly the same thing to yourself how  

Will you grasp yourself I am in mfield who is this  one who is here is my head in m field yes how do   you know your head is here because you can think  about your head you can touch your head you can  

Have a relationship with your head you can have  a relationship with your body are you your head   not really could you live without your head not  really so you’re half your head or a bit of your  

Head and a bit not your head you can just go on  like this forever trying to find what is the real   me the self is a flow of con conceptualizations  and experiences it doesn’t cease as long as it’s  

Flowing then for a while if we live long enough  and we’re lucky enough it will slowly wind itself   down slowly untie and the patterning the sequence  of arisings which we give the name myself to will   start to dissolve and we go into the death  process and then the uh potentiality of the  

Mind will start to wrap new sets of situations  around it like somebody sticking a stick in a   candy floss tub in the market and this sugar  strings just wrap themselves around the stick   we wrap a whole new life around us if you hang out  with small babies you see them gradually starting  

To wrap themselves in stuff they gradually look  out and recognize more that’s going on around   them by the time they’re 18 months they’ve got  much more sense of what’s me and what’s not me   and their toys and what they like and the foods  they’ll eat and the foods they want and this  

Wrapping of oneself into the situation is always  Dynamic we ourselves exist but not as entities not   as things but as processes of experience which  are always arising in relation to another that   is to say for each of us the center of ourself is  outside ourself the center of ourselves is on our  

Skin not in some profound mandala in our heart but  it’s just the surface there is only surface Moment   by moment we are surfacing into a world whose  glistening surface is changing and transforming   and as we see the world change we change and  as we change we see the world change this is  

A very uh important view because it suggests and  a lot of meditation that can increase our sense   of this way of experiencing things it suggests  there is nothing to hold on to the will to power   the sense of Mastery and domination and control  is an illusion our way of existence is whether we  

Like it or not one of participation we are always  participating we are always already involved in   something it’s already happened we can’t stop  the machine it’s always just moving on moving   on therefore to hold on to concept of stopping  bad things and increasing good things by acting  

From a place is on a relative level on an ordinary  level clearly a very good one we would like people   who are violent to become less violent so that we  feel safer when we walk down the street we would  

Like to say to people please control your impulses  because your impulse puts other people in danger   imp pulsive drivers are dangerous drivers so on  a relative level the idea that there is a subject   controlling an object controlling themselves  controlling their motorc car controlling  

The amount of alcohol they consume that’s very  important that’s really valid but this is a kind   of dynamic double move in the theater of existence  there is no real self so we have a double move I  

Want you to develop your lives and become better  people but you don’t really exist so who is the   one who is going to develop themselves and this  is where uh mental development becomes really   important two aspects one is wisdom and the other  is compassion out of compassion for others we wish  

To become more available more useful to develop  all our potential and our qualities out of wisdom   we realize that neither we know others truly  exist so the shadow nature the illusory nature   the mirror reflective reflection like nature of  existence doesn’t mean that there is nothing at  

All because everything is an illusion it doesn’t  mean we can just say Let It Rip that would be   an extreme of a kind of nalism where you just  abandoned existence clearly what happens to people   how they suffer is important so our compassion  takes us towards uh being impacted by being uh  

Feeling the nature of the suffering induced by the  limitations excuse me that operate in other people   that takes us out towards them but if we make that  too real too solid then we find ourselves caught  

Up constrained thinking oh my God how will I ever  get to the end of this what can I do it’s all too   much and that’s a kind of eternalism that one’s  stuck in a immutable situation so the Buddhist   teaching is always the middle way between these  two extremes developing qualities and compassions  

Knowing these are an illusion knowing that the  one who develops them is an illusion and knowing   that the object of their delivery is an illusion  this is called The Emptiness of the three wheels   where subject object and their connection are  all empty and yet the demand the necessity is  

To continue to bring out the richness of our  potential this benefits both self and other if   we take other people as too real too strongly real  then the constraints or limitations of how they

Are can make us feel that the problem is insoluble  but the Buddha was very clear he said the root of   suffering is attachment when we are connected  with other people whether it’s colleagues or   family or if you if you’re a teacher with school  children or patients if you work in a helping  

Profession other people’s limitations are both  real and not real a child in school who’s very   distracted uh annoys other children in the  class makes the teaching function of the the   teacher very difficult and we can say this child  really is not doing well in this class we want  

Them moved somewhere else we speak as if this is  a set of qualities inherent in the child and yet   of course this child is a dynamic process what  is lacking for the child is any clarity about  

What is the nature of my existence that one can  stand close to to oneself and learn to modulate   the movement of the expression of one’s existence  it’s the same with psychiatric patients very often  

They feel this is just how I am it’s a done deal  I cannot change but of course they are changing   all the time they’re breathing in and out they’re  sweating they’re drinking and pissing the FL of  

Their thoughts is changing all the time so who  is the one who cannot change the one who holds   to the story line I cannot change since change is  always occurring to imagine you can’t change is a  

Truly a kind of Madness since the content of our  mind is changing all the time to say I cannot do   anything with this I suffer from repetitive  thoughts well if they repeat there’s a gap   in between each repetition because it’s not  all one homogenized stream therefore there is  

A place where some movement can occur so what  stops US acting on our situation usually it’s   collusion with the environment in my experience  when somebody develops a say obsessive compulsive   disorder you will almost always I think find  a family that colludes with it the family have  

Allowed this to mushroom out and if they grabbed  them by the neck and said just stop it early on   and reinforce their capacity to stop it they would  probably stop it say with people who become agrob  

If you want to live in your house and not go out  someone’s got to bring you food it’s not very   common to find agrob starving to death usually  there is a a whole system of people who are in a   collusive situation helping that person maintain  their pathology that is to say Psychopathology  

Is dialogic it’s always a communication there’s  always another caught up in it even people who   are elective mute we’ll have people going around  working out what they want and what they need and   being very nice and maybe writing notes for them  and work out some little code of gestures that  

They’re going to do we’re all up to something  and if we’re up to something we can be up to   something else and so the point of from loj is  to try to see what are the games that you play  

What are the patterns which you highlight which  you exemplify which you identify with and take   to be yourself and through that taking them as  yourself what are all the other possibilities of   existence which you deny for yourself if somebody  is usually a kind of hot dry character prickly  

Easy and quick to anger that becomes the modality  of their existence they move their life forward   through that particular character tray there are  many other things that they could be doing their   potential is being diminished due to the over  privileging of a narrow band of what they could be

Doing so how to help others and first of all of  course ourselves to realize that we can loosen up   that we can be many many different things that  of course we already are many many different   things and through this incredible Dynamic  movement of our being start to challenge  

The totalizing the limiting the reifying the  entify the substantialize nature of the stories   we tell ourselves I can’t dance people say this  I can’t dance this is nonsense people can dance   in a wheelchair you know dancing is something  everybody can do but many people believe they  

Can’t do or like singing to to sing is not to  become Elizabeth schwarzkoff you know to sing   is just to make some kind of noise and you can  sing Out Of Tune that’s also kind of singing  

We even have a language to describe it we say  you’re singing Out Of Tune you’re off key okay   I’m off key and I’m still singing It’s a Kind  of singing it’s not a very good kind of singing  

But nonetheless we fit it in the General generic  category of singing if you narrow your category   you can exclude a whole lot of things if you say  only Dari Buel can dance then most of us can’t   dance so narrow categories knowing what’s what  is often a profound murder of ourselves knowledge  

When it precedes existence kills off a great deal  of existence because our existence reveals itself   through us through our participation and that  participation covers a huge Arc of graceful to   non-g graceful I think it’d be fair to say we’re  all a bit clumsy with some things some people are  

Socially clumsy some people are physically clumsy  some people can’t cook very well now we could say   these are mistakes and it’s important that you  recognize your limitations and you don’t put   yourself forward as being able to do something you  can’t do can you do it or not you have to tell the  

Truth so when you when you get into that kind of  anxious fearful thing the world becomes very small   because it means then if I act outside of my box  if I show more of myself I’m setting myself up to  

Be humiliated so shame becomes something very  protective of myself because I don’t want to   be ashamed I will live a very small diminished  life I won’t cause any trouble to other people   and I hope they won’t cause any trouble to me  and when I’m dead well it won’t have been too

Bad maybe there’s a wee bit more to life than that something about just finding how we are we are  truly strange existence is beyond expression we   can’t sum up what it’s like to be us drinking  a cup of tea who can describe what that is the  

Pleasure of picking your nose trying to get a  little bit of hard snot on your nail it’s isn’t   it it’s amazing these Sensations what what is that  that is your existence and what does it mean if  

You pick your nose you’re a dirty person we allow  that children might do that but adults shouldn’t   do that we have all these rules and conventions  so we become properly appropriate in our Behavior   Behavior because we know what to do we know what  is socially adaptive you know modern government Le  

Psychotherapy is very much about social adaption  in this insane control driven government that we   have absolute mad people in charge who imagine  that their psychotic stance is rational and that   everybody else is psychotic this is profoundly  dangerous for us because we are all psychotic  

We are all irrational the fantasy of rationality  as the best place to be is profoundly dangerous   for us in Buddhism Mahayana Buddhism we have a  distinction between what’s called relative truth   and absolute truth and the domain of relative  truth is a domain really of rationality where  

We can reflect and think about our existence  put whatever we do into question examine its   Origins and outcomes and through this making  sense of seeing the patterns of we can apply   our energy to make life better in the absolute  truth situation we realize that everything is  

Devoid of inherent self- nature it’s empty and  radiant there is just this the immediacy of   being here together and we can’t say anything  about it we have no access of control over   it because we’re just in it for example if you  just relax a moment and have the experience of  

Being in this room when you look around there’s  usually a little background conversation going   on that can tell you the color of the walls or  maybe the figures that are in the paintings or   something about the lighting that is to say you  are organizing the field of your experience you  

Are telling yourself what is going on you’re  making sense of it if you look around the room   some of you will recognize a lot of people some of  you maybe don’t recognize anyone so we’re working  

Out what do I know what do I not know this is  the realm of relative truth it’s a realm of   things existing in terms of my relationship to  them but when we relax and open there is just  

Light this light has all sorts of shapes and as  we move into their shape you can we say there’s   a door there’s a window and so on we are taking  the open potentiality of this shimmering presence   which is the ceaseless unfolding of our existence  an existence Beyond language and we bring it into  

Language language relative truth and absolute  truth are not opposites they’re not backto back   they are inseparable usually we don’t have  access to absolute truth we only have the   relative truth we only have the domain of control  and organization of trying to work out what it’s  

All about of putting some things up and some  things down and in this field of experience we   tend to confuse perception with projection we  think we are seeing things which are actually   there but we are projecting our knowledge onto  the field of experience and then imagining that  

That information is coming from the object so if  we look over on this side we can see a series of   Windows we know that these are windows because  we have a concept of Windows these things are   not inherently windows the window doesn’t know  it’s a window the wall doesn’t know it’s got a  

Window in it it is our mind which says this is  a window the window is made by our mind if you   had no concept of window it wouldn’t exist for  you you see that in the summertime when these  

Poor little flies that or wasps that come into  the house are trying to get out they don’t know   what a bloody window is they spend hours going  up and down up and down it they can’t work out  

What the hell it is nobody told them very bad  mother wasps not preparing their children for   real life but we can see it’s a window and so  we put them in a jar and take them outside and  

Then they fly off because something was there and  they didn’t know what it was this is our relative   truth domain applying Concepts and using the  power aspect of subject dominating object to   to give ourselves a sense of being centered and in  control this of course is very important children  

Are obsessed by this so was trading information  trying to learn things to know what’s what there’s   an adver on the television at the moment of some  parents having a a dinner party with some other   parents and talking about sound recording and  about whether they’ got digital things and the  

Little child’s there saying we don’t have  digital and the fathers boasting that they   do have digital because children really need to  know about these things it’s very very important   children know so little that whenever they find  out something that they can know they want to  

Hang on it and use it as much as possible because  they’re soaking up whatever is in the environment   because what they recognize very clearly is  knowledge is power but the power of knowledge   is a double-edged sword it gives us a degree of  control and Mastery over the world you know it’s  

Important for me to know tomorrow what time  the train leaves because otherwise I get to   a cold wet station and I’m hanging around for  a long time so knowledge simplifies existence   and yet of course it creates a notion that there  are truly existing separate phenomena there is a  

Mfield railway station there is a train company  there is a timetable if I adapt myself to that   structure all will be well that is true some  of the time in life sometimes the trains are   cancelled there could be a points failure the  driver could maybe doesn’t turn up for work all  

Sorts of things happen that cause trains to  run late or be cancelled our lives are full   of interruptions to the plans and yet generally  we want to hold to the idea that our that we can  

Think ahead and we can plan if we invade Iraq  we will be able to bring happiness to these people George Bush and Tony Blair still seem to  believe that if they keep going things will get   better what they are exemplifying is a very  helpful demonstration of of what Buddhists  

Would call stupidity you know the stupidity  of continuing to imagine that something is   the case in the light of plenty of information  that it’s not they are privileging a concept   over the direct flow of real information rather  than revise their concept they prefer to ignore  

The data that’s coming to them this is the basis  of all neurosis and in Buddhism this is the basis   of our wandering in samsara we believe we truly  exist we believe that this Dimension that we live  

In is something under our control we believe  we know what life is all about paying off your mortgage your kids getting a pension trying  to hustle and survive in the best way you   can thinking about Christmas life goes by in  this endless flow of things to do things to

Remember what was it all for I don’t know  but it wasn’t so bad you know these things   are beautiful they’re so poignant aren’t they if  you hang out with old people and they’re going   towards death and tell their stories of their  existence they’re remembering more about how  

Things were when they were children and it’s  so beautiful but from a point of view of of   Buddhism of Dharma you really want to weep from  your heart heart because they haven’t awoken up  

To what was gone on the whole life has been spent  in a dream a dream of working hard of taking the   kids to Hospital of worrying of difficulties  in the marriage and so on and so on all of  

Which has been very real it’s very poignant  it it gets to us we feel oh this impact of   their existence and yet somehow the light never  came on they didn’t see this is an illusion the   illusion doesn’t mean it was all a waste of  time it’s more that the illusion lets us see  

That it has been much lighter it has been much  more sweet much in the sense of something quite ungraspable and that’s really what we uh  want to do in terms of absolute truth we   want to understand how emptiness and morality or  emptiness and our desire to be compassionate and  

Helpful to other people can be integrated  which is where the Zen view of the natural   purity of our existence the natural openness  of the quality of being that we all have our   existence as it’s here Moment by moment is  infinite it’s ungraspable we cannot know who  

Or what we are because we are not an object  to be known we are something just revealing   itself from the inside out something just so  Exquisite in its freshness and at the same time   we’re caught up in the worries and turbulence  of our lives so how can we understand that we  

Are both limited finite and infinite most of  the time we are so tilted towards our finite   nature that we are working simply to modify and  improve these finite structures and qualities   we want to be more generous we want to be more  diligent we think we should lose weight or we  

Should do more meditation practice or really try  and learn French properly people set themselves   all kinds of tasks to do to improve themselves  all of which can be useful particularly if the   motive for developing these skills is tilted  out towards the other if it’s concerned with  

Connection with other people in the complexity of  their real existence however the central question   has to be who is the one who is going to learn  French who is the one who is going to learn how  

To make a good beel source who’s going to do  that I am who is this one who calls themselves I profoundly looking into the nature of  subjectivity we start to see that there is   a whole other dimension ion going on not separate  form not above or below but absolutely Inseparable  

From the finite so finite and infinite are not  back to back they’re not oppositional they’re   not binary oppositional categories like big and  small they’re not polarities the infinite is the   field in which the finite is manifesting Moment  by moment all the limitations of our existence  

Which are true which can cause us much grief and  sorrow when we regret the fact that maybe we’ve   been unkind or selfish to people we’ve known we  haven’t done our best we’ve betrayed people or  

Let them down in various ways all of these things  that can make us very very small are both real and   not real if we made them completely not real just  as an illusion we would no longer be living in  

This human dimension and be able to connect with  each other but if we make them too real they’ll   become a prison in which we feel somehow stamped  by our past marked by our past defined and limited  

And imprisoned and that is the real torture of  neurosis that’s where we can’t step out of our   story we can’t see oh and it’s gone I’ve been a  total fucking asshole I shouldn’t have done it  

I’m so sorry I hurt you 100% true and it’s gone  so what now it’s important to confess it’s also   important to be forgiven confession forgiveness  confession forgiveness they need to be tumbling   Moment by moment if we can’t confess we can’t be  in the lived honesty of our existence we can’t  

Tell the truth about how we you know protect  ourselves and contort ourselves in order to get   our way and we do all the funny stuff that we do  and it’s gone because if we say I am defined by  

All that I have done I am a construct of my events  then we say I can be summed up I am a thing I can   be known but how where where is your history you  probably can remember things you did when you were  

A child you might have nicked your best friend  Special M they’re Steely you know put it in your   pocket and then you play with it in your bedroom  better not let anyone see I remember nicking  

Something from one of my friends and hiding it in  the in the house under the carpet you know as they   go down the stairs they would have these little  places and I would hide all My Little Treasures  

In there which of course my mother knew very well  so I was like a little squirrel putting them where   someone was taking them out and you know we’ve  all probably done little things like that now what  

Does that mean I stole things am I a thief I did  steal these things that’s true so am I a thief if   I had sex with a child I would become a pedophile  and everything about me would be registered in  

That way the newspapers would be on to me you know  reporters some news of the world or the sun would   be tracking me because I would be that thing if  you murder someone you are a murderer forever  

Everybody knows oh he murdered that person but  if you tell a lie are you a liar forever so we   have a world in which society is also determining  what kind of activities Mark people you could be   a Gunrunner you could be an arms manufacturer  that’s not marked the way a pedophile is the  

People who were in Britain who were manufacturing  landmines and sending them off for us in Vietnam   and Africa they don’t get some sort of warmongers  register Tony Blair is not going to be on war   number International Register is he no he’s caused  a lot more to harm than most pedophiles have and  

That way we can see that what is what is seen as  real or true or true or dominant is culturally   developed as well there is no inherent truth  in any of these categories they’re fashionable   things that were considered non problematic 60  years ago like beating children in schools is  

Highly problematic now if a school teacher hits a  child social worker police will be called in that   wasn’t the case when I was a kid at school so so  many of the categories we use to make sense of our  

World are constructs and we being born into our  culture at a particular time take this particular   historically developed set of Concepts as real and  true living inside that box we work out how things   are and that becomes the limiting truth of our  existence but it’s not like that everywhere in the  

World and it wasn’t like that 50 years ago and it  won’t be like that 50 years from now it’s just a   passing bubble of course we need to know what are  the current conventions of our culture but that’s  

What they are they are conventions and if you  take a convention something which is agreed and   comes into existence because people convene they  meet together and agree that this is how we will   do it if we take something which is a construct  to be something which is inherently real we’re  

Going to be cheating ourselves it’s not completely  unreal but it’s not truly and inherently real in   the traditional examples in Buddhism it’s like the  reflection of the moon on water it’s like a mirage  

In the summer time if you’re driving on a hot day  you see the road shimmering in front of you it   looks like water it’s not water on a beautiful  clear full moon night you see the reflection  

Of the Moon in a lake and it just seems shining  it’s it looks as if the light’s just pouring out   of this wonderful white disc in the lake but the  Moon is not there it appears to be so but it’s not  

So the conventional is an appearance everything  that we experience is simply appearance it’s skin   deep it has no solid substance to it it’s not  nothing at all it’s not profoundly inherently   real the loong teaching helps us to move in that  direction particularly through working out the  

Relation of WI wisdom and compassion so I would  suggest we take a short break now maybe have a   cup of tea and a pee and then come back and do  a little bit more of this the ideas and some meditation so um just to recap we’ve been  looking at how intentionality is built  

Into the very nature of our existence that  we are always intending towards something   the flow of intentionality is governed  by what is arising both internally and externally that intentionality um is  part and parcel of our Human Condition   it’s fed into by various factors our  upbringing the current culture we live  

In the environment we’re in and also uh  our Karma that is to say uh Tendencies   and pressures patternings which arise  from distant causes in previous lives which continue to manifest through us most of  the time of course in Western culture we have a  

Very One Life focused um vision of how things  are and so from a Buddhist point of view we   misconstrue through the nature of causal agency  we see a great deal as being created by actual   interactive behavior in this life and therefore  we want to try to change that this is quite a a  

Radical thing to put that into question you know  in in modern Child Development particularly from a   psychoanalytic point of view we have an idea that  children will internalize many of the features   of their experience they will develop a what’s  called an object relations field a certain set  

Of patternings inside themselves which will then  become a template or a a lens through which they   move into interactions with the environment so  we would see that our adult life shows uh the   traces and remnants of our childhood experience  from a Buddhist point of view these childhood  

Experiences were also generated by our Karma  and whether they register powerfully with us   or not is registered in terms of karma because  clearly some people have terrible childhoods and   get on with their lives and other people have  terrible childhoods and find great difficulty  

In entering into adult existence some people  have easy childhoods and screw up massively as   adults some people have easy childhoods and do  very well it’s very difficult to see a simple   causal relationship between what happens in  childhood and adult life and from a Buddhist  

Point of view the sort of missing Factor there is  the kind of background almost invisible context   if you like a a kind of unconscious field which  is uh manifesting and yet you you can’t quite see

It so if we tend to be reactive if we tend  to be caught up in impulses and the immediacy   of a situation what can we do to stop that one  method which is very much the method of Mahayana  

Buddhism is to develop a profound intention a  conscious intention which will act as a kind of will and a sense of force of Direction which  one reinforces by developing more understanding of   Buddhism which becomes like a map and the more you  can develop a meditation practice that supports  

You in the carrying forward of your intention  in the light of the overall map of existence   provided by the Buddhist teachings then you have  a possibility of not being so much at the mercy of   the toing and throwing of the immediacy of lived  situations so if you take the bodyat for vow if  

You say that in this life and in all my future  lives I vow or I intend to work for the benefit   of others then at each moment of the day you  know what you’re doing that becomes the primary  

Motivation and intention for everything so you  get up in the morning and you clean your teeth you   have a pee I’m having a pee for the sake of all  sentient beings why am I having a pee for the sake  

Of all sentient beings why am I having a cup of  tea for the sake of all sentient beings the motive   behind every activity the maintenance of your body  the development of your skills the relaxation that  

You need all of that you know why you do it it  is arising and organized on the basis of The Vow   which means at no time do you not know what you’re  doing this Grand intention becomes the organizing  

Uh point of all life experience you you would then  never be lost you would never know what you were   doing so if you find yourself waiting at a bus  stop or you’re stuck in a traffic jam what are you  

Doing I’m working for the service of all senting  beings so how will I do it stuck in a traffic jam   I can do some practice I can recall all senent  beings I can remember that although my journey  

Is being impeded by 20 minutes on the motorway  the lives of many beings are impeded by great   suffering in torture camps in prisons in cancer  Wards in the hell Realms and so on so you can use   your own situation through the amplification  of the power of the vow of this primordial or  

Profound intention that you take up something  really from the root of your being it means   then nothing will knock you off course if you  remember what it is this is a a central uh notion  

In Mahayana practice the power of the vow in the  old days uh when the the great bodic satas were   making their bodic SATA vow they did it um with a  profound thought that when I become enlightened I  

Will use the power of my Enlightenment to help  people in a particular way so that for example   uh the Buddha amitaba when he took the bodh satv  promised I will undertake whatever difficulties   are necessary on the path and by accomplishing the  Fulfillment of Enlightenment I will use its power  

To make my name so powerful that if somebody  just remembers my name they will be able to   get enlightened instantly or easily therefore my  effort my suffering my diligence I dedicate as   a means of making other people’s life easily make  it flow without so much hassle so that that gives  

Us a flavor of the sense of an intention that I  will overcome all obstacles nothing will get in   my way so now something is very big I mean the  key thing that we can see when we encounter our  

Own limitations and neur es that often the spirit  is willing but the flesh is weak the impulse takes   us over we decide to do something and then we find  that we haven’t actually done it what is it that’s  

Causing this to occur usually it’s that our felt  sense of ourself instead of being uh panoramic   and expansive and being able to see whatever  is going on starts to be become connected into   what’s in front of us and we get our blinkers  on and we collapse into it so why are we doing  

That we we may know that we don’t need to do that  but we find ourselves doing it so who is the one   that is doing that activity it’s a collaps part of  ourselves we could call it a self state or a a a  

Sub personality but having lost the articulation  into the wider sense of ourselves we all our   energy of this wide self gets mobilized into  something rather narrow and in that narrowness   there is clearly a lot of push and volition in a  simple hydraulic sense that if you’ve got water  

Flowing down a pipe that’s a foot across and then  it gets the pipe um diameter gets shrunk down and   it’s now only 6 in across as the water goes into  that the pressure is going to increase and that’s  

What happens inside ourselves when you get caught  up in something you get more oomph whether that’s   lust or anger or jealousy or greed would that that  seems to be the case so clearly becoming small for   getting the wider context abandoning oneself into  a narrow vision is rather dangerous it’s dangerous  

Because it’s a bit blind it’s overfocused and it’s  over intense just because of this pressure buildup   so one of the functions of a bodh satv is to say I  will hold in mind all sentient beings at all times  

When I walk down the street when I make a cup  of coffee when I chat to a friend always I will   hold in mind all beings I will not forget others  that’s a very radical decision because it means I  

From this day on give up a private life my life  is now always public it may be invisibly public   but it is still public because I bring all beings  to be with me at all times under all conditions this is a great protection against collapsing  into narrow overfocused activity both because  

If one’s attention is out to all of these beings  with this great intention to help them you’ve got   a protection against collapse and at the same time  if all these beings are there watching what you’re   doing you’re probably going to be shamed out  of over intensifying things too much because  

We often do our worst activities in the privacy  of what we regard as just our private sphere to   take the body of vow is something enormously  challenging it says I will be a servant for   beings I will give up Mastery and in particular  I will give up putting myself first I will give  

Up what’s often translated as self-cherishing  the that is to say holding myself dear usually   involves holding other people not so dear if  I make myself very precious and special then   other people will not be so precious and special  because I’ve put me first so if I put other people  

First then I put myself below them why would  I want to do that usually we live in a quite   a hierarchical kind of world we offer things  up to big people and we put things down onto   lesser people we praise people with wonderful  qualities and we want to control and denigrate  

People who seem to have lesser qualities we may  do this very explicitly as in some traditional   cultures or we may do it implicitly because we  know that many of the products we have are made   in in countries like China where they have a lot  of very poor conditions for the production but we  

Can buy our Commodities cheaply and then use our  extra money to uh praise the people who we like   to buy them special presents because the daily  things that we need come to us cheaply because   someone else is having the screw put on their  head so so we we’re in this hierarchical world  

What this is saying is we should be the servant  of everyone that the basis of my servitude is   the other being’s potential for awakening not  their qualities now most of the time we relate   to people in terms of their qualities whether  they’re interesting or not interesting rich or  

Not rich young or not young attractive or not  attract active intelligent and so on we all   have our own particular criteria and we think  I like more of that and less of that so we make  

Our choices in the world to take a bodh vow is to  radically put that into question it says I will   make myself available for people just because they  exist and the root of that existence is the mind  

And the nature of that mind is the Buddha nature  is their possibility to awaken therefore seeing   this precious jewel in the heart of all beings I  will place them above me which means I will place  

Torturers above me I will place butchers above me  I will place murderers above me I will not punish others if there is punishment I  will take it on myself this is   very strange kind of idea surely the  good should be praised and rewarded  

And the bad should be punished otherwise  how will Society survive but this would say whenever I am happy I give all my happiness  to other beings whenever I feel sad I will take   all the sadness of other beings onto me that’s  very strange normally we feel whenever I’m happy  

I want it to last as long as possible whenever I  feel sad I want it to be over as soon as possible   but this is a complete reversal it says I will  give my happiness to Saddam Hussein why will I  

Do that because he has a Buddha nature and he  needs happiness more than me because the root   of my happiness is my meditation practice  and my understanding of the profound nature   of existence the unification of wisdom and  compassion of emptiness and manifestation  

Saddam Hussein doesn’t have it that so I will  give him my happiness happiness comes and goes   whoever had stable happiness so I will give him  my happiness and I will take the unhappiness of   all beings unto me when that unhappiness lasts  forever it will also dissolve understanding  

Emptiness and impermanence I can become truly  heroic this is not about becoming uh some kind   of masochistic it’s not self-punishing it’s  not a an aesthetic practice but it’s to say I   will develop the capacity to deal with infinite  suffering because infinite suffering is moments  

Of suffering but the Infinity of the mind has  no limit the Mind itself has no top or bottom   no back or front no beginning or end relaxing  into the nature of the Mind itself all phenomena   ceaselessly arise and pass arise and pass good  events arise bad events arise recognizing this  

I will open myself to dealing with it equally  some days are good okay some days are bad why   complain turning turning turning turning  this infinite expansiveness of the heart   means that we’re completely open to what’s  going on I will not be set up by Big Happy  

Events because they pass by and I will not be  diminished by sad sad events because I’m not   going to be locked inside them rest inting in  the mind’s nature we recognize my mind is not   created by good events it’s not destroyed by bad  events my mind is indestructible in its open Root

Nature and out of this in openness arises these  moments some are up some are down being present   with them in their illusory nature we can  partici participate more freely in the world because the root of our being is  spaciousness not manifestation whenever  

You try to stabilize a situation it will come  under pressure because nothing is stable when   I got on the got to the train station yesterday  the train before had been cancelled the train   afterwards was canceled so a lot of people on  the train so I was going to sit quietly and  

Read a book and there are people shouting and  pushing and banging there was someone sitting   next to me and she was typing in her laptop with  her elbow out in my face I tried to hold my book  

Up my elbow’s going like that’s what happens  so if you have a grand plan oh on the train   I’ll have two hours and I’ll just have quiet  reading it’s not like that on the train I’ll  

Find out what’s going on in the train and and  tomorrow I get the train back and it’s Sunday   and there’s often delays on the train so I can’t  think oh I’ll be back home by that time I’ll be  

Back home when I get back home it’s like that  so how can we hold our life in a light way if we overinvestment if we just think very briefly about  the five elements earth water fire wind and air   we are very materialistic in our orientation  we are over privileging the Earth element all  

The time we think we will have security security  of family life stability of marriages Financial   Security and so on but the turbulence of the  world is great and if we try to resist it just   by pushing it away that often doesn’t work  we just become very exhausted part of I think  

The way forward is to recognize turbulence is  normal you know if you watch the news there’s   always something going on why is there something  going on because there’s always something going   on our world is turbulent it is just turbulent  it’s never calm it’s never ever come the Tibetan  

World for this world is jig 10 jig means um  dissolving or breaking or changing something   which is transi and 10 means a sight it’s a  sight of impermanence this world is a sight   of transition now if that’s what it actually is  to imagine that it will be stable is an absolute

Illusion I work in the NHS and we’ve been  developing PL plans for our small department   and now we have cuts of 99.2% this year and next  year I think 7% is coming so all the plans that  

We had to grow and develop and the new things we  were going to do they’re not going to happen and   in fact we probably will lose a lot then we might  be made redundant we don’t know yet so in that way  

All these mental constructs that I had of what  we would be doing they’re reveal to me as just   dreams well they’re just like rainbows in the  sky they look very attractive and you have your   proposals and suddenly the rainbow’s gone that’s  what it is the world is made of gossa it’s not  

Substantial when we think that the Earth element  can be stabilized and dominant over everything   else this is a big illusion everything arises  due to causes and these causes are beyond our   comprehension we don’t know why the world goes the  way it does so we are participating in something  

Which we can’t step outside rise above and control  to be part of the world is to be disturbed so if   we think I don’t want to be disturbed I shouldn’t  be disturbed it’s not fair that I’m disturbed you  

Disturb yourself twice as much the fact is you  will be disturbed because disturbance is what   you get here so if you can think that’s what we  get we are not living in North Africa the sun is  

Not shining it is not warm that’s a fact this is  mfield so it’s cold and it’s damp that’s what it   is and so can we live in this without having an  opinion about it because that’s that’s the point  

Where the ego’s false agency comes in I’m in a  situation it is what it is but I don’t like it   can’t we change it this is the whole force of  modernism of ceaselessly acting on situations   to try to improve them and the government tries  to improve the health service perhaps not working  

They try to improve the schools perhaps it’s not  working there are many many things like the child   support agency and maybe all these huge amounts  of money huge amounts of effort should give us   pause for Thought Stalin’s five-year plans  mong’s cultural revolution again and again  

And again people want to change things we want to  bring democracy to Iraq perhaps that’s the wrong   way of thinking about the world from a Buddhist  point of view one should be more soft more more   gentle more subtle and work with the energies of  situation finding a way to inhabit the world as  

It is in order to optimize the possibilities of  connection and Awakening rather than attempting   to change it this is very very important and of  course it’s very challenging to our ego because   our sense of self wants to be in charge most  of us don’t like being too dependent on other  

People the prospect of maybe getting old and  potentially bedridden and having to be looked   after by other people is often very terrifying  because we like to do things our way and yet our   way is such a fragile notion we we don’t actually  have much leverage on the world so maybe seems  

Like there’s a contradiction here on the one hand  we take a bod sa and we say we’re going to save   all sentient beings and on the other hand we can’t  control anything very much how can that be how can  

We be completely omnipotent and impotent at the  same time maybe it’s because Awakening has nothing   to do with controlling situations Awakening has  to do with being present in the situation as it   occurs to fully open into how things are with  their manifold their very different diverse  

Qualities and not to try to dominate and control  to awaken is to be here in life as it is to be   in our sleep in awake as we much as we can in  our dreams to be awaken the process of death  

Not to turn our gaze away not to vanish into Day  Dreams into fantasies not to knock ourselves out   but just to stay with our experience however it is  knowing that we’re foolish knowing that we become   limited and just staying with that limitation  and this is the particular view of suan if you  

Stay present with your limitation no matter  how intense your limitation you will not be limited that’s not the same as collapsing into  the limitation it’s not the same as trying to   step out with it and stop it say for example  you’re jealous you find yourself often being

Jealous to stay with the jealousy means to  be present with the arising of jealousy to   know what it’s like in your body to know what  it does to your tummy to know what it does to   your breathing to be aware of the prickliness  the hyper vigilance that goes with it the rapid  

Thoughts that it’s not fair fear the risings of  anger the fallings into hopelessness and just   observing oh yeah this is me one’s not merged in  it nor is one trying to stand apart and say oh I  

Hate myself when I’m like this so many people  do that they think I shouldn’t be like this I   don’t want to be like this this is not who I  really am but we ain’t really anything we’re  

Just what’s occurring there is no real self as a  substantial entity somewhere else we are what we   are now if we can be with ourselves as jealousy  the jealousy comes and goes so here was a shape   that was arising and you stay very close with  it present with it not merged unconsciously  

In it not just jealous but not trying to distance  yourself from it and stop it happening and if you   stay close with it it will be there and then it  will clear and you will still be there and then  

Something else arises you stay with it it goes and  you will still be there and in that way we start   to be more seamlessly continuously present through  all the fluctuations of our existence and in the   San tradition that is really what Awakening is it  means not to be asleep into dreams of Confluence  

Or flight running away from things doesn’t  take you anywhere except into mental busyness   collapsing into a thought as if it was your true  identity doesn’t take you anywhere except into disillusionment we are not anything we are not anything

So for example I work in the hospital as  a psychotherapist and I have a title and   an office and so on this stuff is entirely  contingent it’s dependent on all sorts of   factors there is nothing that guarantees me to be  able to do that job for a long period of time if  

The budget is cut more and more I will lose my  little office I will lose my little world and   people will forget that I was ever there while  I inhabit it I can hang on to it as if it was  

Me but that’s an illusion my job is not mine my  job is something I participate with due to the   presencing of certain factors these factors  can easily be rearranged and my life will be  

Rearranged the idea that I have a job that I am  am that is a way of becoming stupid it doesn’t   mean that I am not that it means this one has to  explore how to occupy that space in the manner of  

A dream in the manner of theater if you’re a mom  and you’ve got kids you are their mom they call   out mom and you’re immediately there and then they  grow up and they’re not so interested so what was  

That mess what was the mum of being a mum it was  something that arose on the basis of them being   small and needy as they get big and less needy  you’re no longer that kind of mom so you came  

Into the position of being a mom with the birth of  the child and as the child grows up you go through   all different kinds of mumming and gradually it  becomes less and less your existence so to build  

A house on that kind of identity is crazy what  you can do is participate in the experience of   muming because it is clearly an activity to  be a mom you can’t sit in an armchair with  

Your arms crossed and be a mum you know moms are  always running around it’s an activity but being   a bus driver is an activity all our identities  are active there is no identity that we have in  

Our Ordinary World which is not something which  is done either we do it or something does it to us if we stop doing things who will we be this is  the central question of meditation in meditation  

We want to observe what happens as thoughts come  and go as the thought starts to go is there anyone   still there who is the one who is there present  with these flows of thoughts because as we’re   looking just now often our identity seems to  be merged into the pattern of thoughts that’s  

Occurring we are identified with the thought I  am this this is happening to me I am hungry I am   thirsty I’m bored I want to go out I want this  I want that if we just sit with these thoughts  

And they come and go who is the one who is still  there that one who is still there is there still   there because they’re still they’re the one  that’s not moving everything else is moving   the the aspect of ourselves which is aware is the  aspect which is not actually in the movement so  

When the movement stops there we’re still there  and yet we are also part of the movement this is   the nonduality of Stillness and movement it’s not  that we are one thing or another it’s not that we  

Are really really still and we just happen to be  moving it’s that the whatever movement is occuring   in is coming out of the Stillness our mind is  spacious relaxed and calm and full of movement   the traditional example is the sky the sky as  space is just open you can’t find the sky but  

When we look out we see all sorts of patterns  of clouds sometimes the clouds come very close   and fill the whole sky sometimes they’re very  light and fluffy and sometimes they vanish the   sky is always open even when it’s full of clouds  in the same way our mind is always open even when  

There’s a lot of activity going on but if we are  always tilted towards the activity we won’t see   what’s behind it and through it it’s not that  the sky should really really be clear because  

If you live in this kind of climate the sky is  usually got some clouds in it it’s not that the   clouds are spoiling the sky but the very nature  the very openness of the sky offers Hospitality  

To the clouds the very openness of our mind means  that we can be good and bad we can be generous we   can be selfish we can be loving and caring and  up for ourselves all of these things can arise  

And pass but just like the clouds come and go  without leaving a permanent track on the sky   Good Deeds that we do don’t make the sky of our  mind any better or brighter and bad Deeds don’t  

Make it any worse that is to say the domain of  manifestation of how we are has relevance only in   terms of its contingency of how we are and who we  interact with it doesn’t Define who we really are  

Which is why we can say the most horrible people  who have ever existed have Buddha nature they are   really Buddhas so people who work in torture camps  people who fix electrodes to other people’s bodies   and turn on the power and watch them suffering  writhing in agony and they don’t switch it off  

These people have Buddha nature their mind in the  very moment when they’re torturing someone is open   but their energy the focus of their attention  is caught up in what is going on locked into   a conceptualization this person is scum this  person is the enemy they deserve this so the  

Very intensity of the manifestation that’s arising  in the mind is blinding the person to the ground   out of which that manifestation is occurring yeah  so if we then say but only a terrible person could  

Do that I’m not like that I wouldn’t like to do  that what we do is we create an entity there are   some kinds of people who we call terrible people  and terrible things are done by terrible people  

Makes a lot of sense but when you hear Tony  Blair talking about terrorist it doesn’t make   so much sense All the Troubles in the world are  caused by a few terrorists if only we can find   them and having your DNA samples is going to  help that once we’ve got the iris recognition  

System going and the sweat recognition system  and the size of shoe recognition system we will   know who the terrorists are and we’ll get rid  of them and then we’ll all be happy forever it  

It looks ludicrous when governments do that but we  do the same thing all the time we say I don’t want   to hang out with bad people I just want to hang  out with good people so who are the good people  

Well when you meet people for the first time  they seem kind of nice and then after a while   they look a bit more problematic so where are  the really really really good people where are they problem everybody’s good and bad our  minds are turbulent we’re in a world where  

Lots of things are happening so if we spend our  time categorizing on the level of manifestation   and trying to make choices on the basis of  control we’re endlessly busy but if we look   back through history it hasn’t actually taken  us very far because how can we be sure that  

The categories we are employing just now to work  out who’s good and who’s bad are correct where I   grew up in Scotland growing up in a Protestant  family it was very clear that Catholics were   bad you don’t need to have any doubt Catholics  are bad the English are bad that’s you know we  

See that all over the world people have their  category systems it’s very quick very easy when   you actually get close to people and you engage  with them you think oh I never thought they’d be   like that so people are always complicated but we  finding complicated difficult try to control it  

By imposing heuristic devices explanatory devices  that categorize according to simplified criteria   and then in the face of the evidence that actually  the world doesn’t fit our criteria we say fuck the   world I like my criteria you know I trust my  mind I don’t trust other people there’s a lot  

Of that about Tony Blair’s does it very nicely  for us he’s incredibly useless because useful both he’s very useful because he exemplifies  exactly that kind of stupidity you know he   believes he is right and he drives things through  according to his beliefs and because he does it  

On a very big canvas we can see how mad it is  and we do exactly the same we don’t want to   know so there we see how attachment displaces  us from the ongoing Dynamic movement of the  

World puts us into a box where we’re constantly  out of sync with the world trying to impose our   values or retreating into ourselves and saying  oh it’s all too much for me I can’t cope with   that but that is what we’re living in you  where where can you jump out of the world  

Into there is no way to hide in the hospital  I see patients who say I don’t want anything   to do with anyone take your clothes off there  and get out of that chair it’s not your chair  

Why are you sitting there that chair was made  by someone you don’t want anything to do with   anyone go and find a place to walk with that’s  got nothing to do with anyone all the landscape  

In Britain has been affected by human beings  what are you going to stand on a stone in the   sea you know it’s completely mad you want to  live life on your terms with me paying my taxes  

To feed you and clothe you what is this know  it’s it’s a Madness it’s absolute illusion so   the body for is is very powerful because it says  I willingly connect myself forever to a bunch of

Tossers isn’t that amazing I do it willingly I  say these people who are just out to lunch who   are crazy who haven’t a clue what they’re doing  and I am going to take myself and all my lovely  

Energy and put it in their service why would I  do that because I have no choice because they are   my world other people are our existence however  they are is how we are we’re all in it together  

You can’t opt out there’s no place to opt out so  working for the benefit of others is paradoxically   of course working for the benefit of yourself to  be with other people and to see their potential  

Is to remind oneself of how one can betray one’s  own potential because to abandon the other is to   abandon yourself whenever we say me first we’ve  cheated ourselves because the me that is the me   first is not a me that’s very comfortable to  be with in the long run putting ourself first  

Always ends up putting ourselves last because if  you try to put yourself first and you’re greedy   and pushy you end up creating situations  which don’t work out that seem to fit your experience so this body set idea is very profound  it’s both an absolute volition because you have  

To decide it from the depth of your being and at  the same time it is absolutely given because self   and other are born together the great illusion is  the illusion of Duality that self and other are  

Separate but all day long we are in an environment  and at night as we fall asleep and we enter into   Dreams they’re Interactive things are going on  subject and object are always moving together   you cannot get out of samsara on your own because  samsara is a state where subject and object appear  

To be separate but are of course always together  the only way out of samsara is to awaken to the   fact of nonduality that the spaciousness of being  and the movement of being are inseparable and the   move movement of being is the movement of all  beings that how we are is always influenced by  

Others nobody has power to control the deal when  the Chinese came into Tibet these big llamas got   pushed out of their monasteries some were killed  some were stripped naked many were locked up and   tortured many fled over the mountains in the snow  and the rain they didn’t have much power it is an  

Illusion to imagine that Mastery is possible  in this domain what we can have though is an   Exquisite nuancing of participation we can become  more alive more precisely connected with all that   we meet so that instead of approaching the world  inside a kind of package deal of ourselves our  

Thoughts and assumptions about Who We Are we tilt  our energy out through our senses and experience   the shape of the world as it is and responding  to that so that rather than having to know in   advance what we have to do we allow the fact  that the world is always co-creating us with

Itself that’s quite nice it’s not all up to you  how you are is also created by others so if you   just trust that it’ll be okay I see so many  patients who say but I don’t know what to say  

I spoken with this a guy on Thursday and he said  yeah well I you know I invited this girl L and and   and and I just kept thinking what am I going to  say what am I going to say and she was interested  

In in movies and she was talking about movies but  I don’t see many movies so I didn’t know what to   say so I kept think think of what would I say  and I said well did you listen to her talking  

About the movies no I was trying to think of  what to say you know and and of course we do   that as well that self- preoccupation is stupid  because it cuts you off from what’s there and if  

We’re with what’s there it’s not a a closed steel  balll it’s actually lots of tendrils when you look   out into the world there’s lots of stuff there  and it’s little shining glimmering things so you   walk down the street there’s usually at least one  person you can smile at you know there’s usually  

At least one little black bird hopping about  there’s usually one last little leaf swinging   in the tree you know there’s something to connect  with and and then you’re into something and then   you’re into something else and into something  else and cooking it up inside yourself is not

Necessary so the part of the body sat vow  is the externalization of one’s existence   not that we’ll find the truth of our being  somewhere deep inside us there is no inside   when we sit in meditation there is no  inside or outside it’s not some mystery  

Hidden deeply within us to help others is to  be alive in our senses in a world which is   always unfolding so maybe just before we break  for lunch we could just sit and do a little practice

What we can do just sitting in a relaxed way  just with our gaze open into the space in front   of us we can recite ah three times slowly  just breathing out and just relaxing into  

The space just nothing to do and just as much  as you can be present with life as it tumbles forward a a [Applause] ah okay so we’ll do uh more practice in  the afternoon and we’ll look at a a   brief text which describes the uh the  basic principles of Lo Jong uh there’s  

A translation of it in the frame at  the back of the room if you want to   look at it beforehand um do you want to  say something about the time frame of the

Day what I do is I briefly give you an overview  from the point of view of soan uh how the universe   is constructed how we are constructed and  look at that the implications from that of practice very natural to St

Um as we were looking this morning what we  have is the immediacy of our experience and   simultaneously a flow of lot of organizing  ideas these ideas are themselves part of   the immediacy of our experience but it  can appear as if there are two different

Phenomena in the tradition of Zen the  first uh and most important thing is   to see directly or to recognize what is  our own nature nature here means what is   already given that which is not a construct  as the Buddha said all created things will  

Move towards destruction everything that  has a beginning will have an end no matter   what we build up sooner or later it starts  to collapse we see that externally with uh   kingdoms from from the past with huge powerful  regimes like the USSR gradually they start to  

Implode nothing last for very long the British  Empire used to be vast now this is quite a small country everything which has come into being  through the use of effort will remain for a   while and then gradually will just dissolve which  means that whatever you effortfully construct  

Will not survive in the long term that which  survives is that which is not constructed is   there a part of us which is not constructed  we live most of our lives in culture rather   than in nature that is to say we are always  interpreting our existence we make plans for  

Things that we might do we have frames of  reference through which we make sense of   things is there anything which is just there  just given as we were looking before lunch   when we inspect the mind we find that thoughts  feelings and Sensations are changing so what  

What is this change occurring in so here  we are sitting here having experiences of   various kinds hearing sounds seeing colors our  own bodies moving being aware of the movement   of other people’s bodies this is continuous  stuff is happening central question is who  

Is this happening to who is the one who has this  experience our mind is both uh presenting itself   in terms of our personalities the the mode of our  engagement in the world with others our choices  

The things that we’re drawn towards the things  that we shy away from and our nature and our mind   is also something which is just an awareness  an awareness which is not the personality for example if you like chocolate that can be  something that you might know about yourself I  

Like chocolate but we’re also aware that we make  a statement I like chocolate I like chocolate   doesn’t remain very long you have to say it again  I like chocolate you may feel yeah but that’s just  

The saying of it I always like chocolate but  of course if you eat a lot of chocolate you   don’t want any more chocolate so the liking of  chocolate in its experience and in its statement  

Lasts for a period of time so who is the one who  says I like chocolate because that one can also   say I’m tired or I’m thirsty or I want to go for  a walk the sight of speaking the sight of what  

Seems to be the center of our existence is able  to offer Hospitality to many many aspects of our   identity I am hot I am tired I am thirsty  no I don’t need any water I’m not thirsty anymore who is this self what is this  self which can be this can be that can  

Be the other how come I feel like I am one  thing although I am endlessly inconsistent   how can it be that I’m thirsty one moment then  having drunk some water I’m no longer thirsty   I said I am thirsty I feel very thirsty and  now it’s gone my identification was with a  

Passing phenomena and in that moment that  passing phenomena felt like a definition   of myself who who said that I said it who  is the one who says I in I am thirsty I   I want to just imagine that for yourself I  just running your mind some of the things I

Am it’s immediately quite clear isn’t it I am all the things we could be  and in this moment we say I   am thirsty I am tired I can be many  different things and I am just this thing in the moment of being just this  thing I haven’t annihilated all the other  

Things which I can be because you might say  I am thirsty and I am a man I am a man who   is thirsty so being a man doesn’t end because  I’m thirsty but in the moment of being thirsty  

I don’t care whether I’m a man a woman or  a dog or a cat I’m thirsty just give me a   fucking drink no there’s something about  all the rest doesn’t matter there’s just this that’s what we have to watch because  this is not abstract Theory this is our  

Existence how suddenly I’m this suddenly  I’m that suddenly I’m that there is no   real contradiction to the fact that that if I  was one fixed thing I could not be all these   other things it is my very emptiness  which allows me to be everything it is  

The openness the unformed of our basic  being what we are how we manifest into   the world which allows Moment by moment for  us to be exactly precisely just this and not other this is the central understanding of su  you don’t have to stop being any of the things  

That you are because none of the things that you  are infinitely or ultimately defines who you are   what really defines who you are is the fact that  you can’t say anything about who you are it is  

Inexpressible the openness out of which we become  this and that so we are both infinite and finite   and these are pulsing all the time in order to  find the infinite we need to relax in order to  

Participate in the finite quality Moment by moment  we need to be very precise so we need discipline   and Clarity to be in the world with others and we  need no discipline and just to trust the natural   Clarity of relaxing into the open State and these  two are inseparable traditionally we use the image  

Of a mirror to show this the mirror is empty when  you look into a mirror you can’t find the mirror   of the mirror inside the mirror there is always  something else the reflection is the aspect of  

The mirror which is other than the mirror of the  mirror and yet it’s Inseparable from it when you   look in the mirror you don’t see the mirror you  see something else so in the same way when we sit  

In meditation just very relaxed what do we find we  find stuff this stuff is inside us but it’s not us   in the sense we’re not defined by it you look in  a mirror and you see the different Reflections  

You tilt it so that it shows all different parts  of the room each of these images is truly in the   mirror but it’s not the mirror you can’t take  that reflection out of the mirror it’s in the  

Mirror in the same way you sit here maybe your  back is sore maybe your mind gets a bit busy   this is a reflection this is you but it’s not  really you after a while that reflection will  

Vanish the mirror will tilt something else will be  revealed your mind is always full of stuff is that   stuff you if you think it’s you then oh how can  it be that I’m so bad all these years have gone  

By and my mind is still full of nonsense I’m still  agitated I’m still worried I’m still trouble maybe   I had therapy maybe I’ve done meditation taii  yoga what what’s wrong with me that I’m still

Me but that is exactly the problem you think  that you are me your mind is not yours on the   most profound level your mind is not yours because  it’s open and empty and nobody could own it you  

Can’t buy your mind you can’t sell your mind you  can’t lose your mind you can’t find your mind it’s   just there it’s just given it doesn’t belong to  you and yet it’s the root of who you are and on  

The other hand all the stuff that arises in your  mind arises due to causes and conditions which   are interactive with other people if someone  says something nice to you you feel very good   then somebody says something horrible to you and  you feel very small or very angry they have made  

You angry now if you go to some kinds of therapy  they say oh you have to take responsibility for   yourself you have chosen to be angry nobody can  make you angry if you don’t want them come on he  

Not like that that’s to be very anal to have a  very strong doorkeeper that says the message has   been received now I will review the message now  I will decide how to respond to the message you  

Can practice that some kinds of therapy also work  on that basis but it’s very very slow excuse me I   have to find out how I’m feeling now please  don’t interrupt you see now I’m feeling this  

You see only if only if you are dead and cause  no disturbance in my experiential field can I   truly tune into myself it’s mad it’s quite mad  because we don’t actually have a front door to ourselves this is useless as a door because it  got so many holes in it burglars and robbers  

Are getting in all the time squatters  are coming and shitting in your front   parlor stuff is happening you are not  inside yourself other people are inside   you all the time because you look around the  room and you can look in that corner or that  

Corner or that corner or that corner will  you see yourself no you’ll see some other bugger all of these people you have to spend  your whole life looking out other people when   actually youd prefer just to see yourself but  we are condemned to see other people our world  

Is full of other people it’s not really full  of ourselves you can’t see yourself terribly   sad isn’t it how lovely if you could just  have your eyes that went out like a crab or something but it’s a fact we are  always full of the other the other  

Is what fills us up this self is nothing but  a continuous movement in reaction to other people the mirror of the Mind the openness of the  mind has no limit no boundary self and other arise   together within it there is no fundamental  separation or duality of subject and object  

Therefore trying to protect the subject by keeping  object at Bay is a hopeless task because you can’t   find the limit of yourself what you can do is  you can create a construct of yourself you can  

Say I am this I am this I am this and therefore  fuck off how many times have I told you not to do   that we’ve known each other sometime and you still  do this to me don’t you know I am like this people  

Often speak that way especially when they get a  bit itchy you know they fucking give me a break   get off my back don’t what about me but in that  moment what about me they’re doing something that   they don’t do every day not everybody’s walking  about like a chimpanzee yeah so suddenly I willing  

To Define myself and I think you should know  how I am defined but it’s just a passing moment   because we’re not always like anything we cannot  Define ourselves sometimes we’re happy sometimes   we’re sad sometimes maybe we eat a lot of food  sometimes we don’t eat a lot of food sometimes we  

Like sweet things sometimes we like Savory things  what is predictable about us we go through phases   we go through periods when we’re really into  something and then we’re not and when we’re in  

That phase that seems to be how we are and then  it shifts and we seem to be some other way this   is what makes it so difficult the definitions  of self are Concepts arising in the mind they  

Do not provide an accurate definition of how we  are because everything that we can say which is   true about us is not true about us so for example  I can say I am a man and there a kind of giveness  

To the fact that I am a man and yet of course the  concept of of man is very uncertain and most men   are not quite sure whether they’re proper men and  they’re not quite sure how should they be in order  

To be men should they be more powerful or more  controlling or aggressive or Tender or this or   that because as long as everybody believes that we  all know what man is it’s very simple but as soon  

As you start to examine what it is it crumbles  away through your fingers just like sand so when   we assert things it’s a kind of hypnotic induction  let me talk in a way that you can believe you know  

What I’m talking about and then I can believe that  I know what I’m talking about cuz I’m a man but I   don’t know what it means to be a man I’m not the  same as my dad I thought when I was small my dad  

Was a real man but I’m not like him so maybe I’m  not a man because I’m not like my dad and if I   was more like my dad maybe I’ll be more of a man  how will I be I don’t know how should I be I don’t  

Know we don’t know how to be do it how should  we speak what should I say to my children what   should I say to my old mom what should I say to  my patient we don’t know we say something that’s  

What we find ourselves saying but we don’t know  definitely how to do anything very much except   for the simple technical things like making a cup  of tea but being human with other human beings is  

Not technical there’s no rule BU as to how to  do it we find ourselves doing it and we find   that the way we do it is influenced by bits of  our history our hopes our fantasies things that   we’ve read we’re always constructing and making  something into the flow so then the mind’s nature  

Is empty and open ungraspable and at the same  time revealing Moment by moment shapes patterns   which we identify with or don’t identify with  we like some things we don’t like some other things as long as these uh Reflections or  movements are occurring inside the openness  

And they’re just coming and going we can stay  fresh in the moment doesn’t mean that there’s   a great deal of order or coherence because  spontaneity will always have different moves   in it the goal of the practice is not to be  perfect in a formal sense like a show jumper  

That can clear every hurdle it’s not having  a perfect round in that way rather it is to   be present in our lives however they are to be  unbroken unfragmented in the face of confusion   to be accepting of confusion pleasure happiness  sadness then the continuity of the openness  

Is there we relax into that and the turmoil  bubbles on and we are not so identified with the turmoil Buddhism says suffering comes from  ignorance ignorance is not a a fixed point   it is a practice of ignoring when we  ignore when we don’t attend to when  

We don’t rest in when we are not  present with the openness of our being the empty stage on which all these dramas  are being performed is forgotten and there is   just the intense Focus using into the performance  itself this performance then takes on a particular  

Reality because all I’ve got is the show that I’m  trapped in I don’t know how to get out of it that   forgetfulness is called the beginning of samsara  this is primordial ignorance it happened a long   time ago and it happens Moment by moment where  we forget the illusory nature of manifestation  

The reflection in the mirror is there and it’s  not real but it’s there our experience in this   room together clearly we are all here but what are  we here as flowing gestures not solid substantial   entities but once ignorance arises there is  attachment because now I experience myself as  

Inside my skin bag looking out at you I am me you  are you I find stuff is arising in my head I look   at you I can’t see the stuff arising in your head  so I feel closer to me than to you because I have  

More information about me than I have about  you I have to think about how you are maybe   have some empathy towards you but as for myself  I can directly feel the inside of my body I feel  

My feelings so the meanness of me feels more  real than the uness of you so I’m privileging   this as Central and you as peripheral and I  then seem to go out from me towards you going   out from the certainty of me towards the question  question of who are you of course there’s always  

A question who am I but we become very quick at  having answers to that question so that who am   I becomes small questions Petty questions rather  than a profound one what is this we’re thinking  

What do I want to eat what do I want to drink  do I want to go to the cinema tonight who who   am I going to sit next to where should I go for my  holidays these questions are very busy filling the  

Gap and constructing again and again an identity  but the the answers we give to these questions can   only suffice for a short period of time what will  I do at Christmas but then Christmas will be gone  

Oh what will I do in January oh what will I do  in February what will I do in the summer holidays   what what what so we’re tilted ahead of ourselves  going out trying to fill the space moving things  

Around that is very busy there is no peace in  that which is why uh in the Tibetan language our   situation is described as draa as moving or going  we are moving beings we’re always busy always preoccupied and the key thing is to see our real  nature the openness the Stillness has not gone  

Anywhere else we are moving in Stillness it is  the very fact of the openness of our being that   allows us to move but by by being Intoxicated by  The Movement we don’t attend to the Stillness and  

Then we think oh I’ll rest when I finish this oh  God I will I’ll be retired in a few years then   I’ll be able to then I’ll be able to oh at least  when I’m dead off sitting in a box there’ll be  

Nothing going on some little maggot start moving  about it’s always displaced somewhere else when   the movement stops I will be at rest but it  never stops not by day or night always there   is something going on always busy hopes and fears  happiness and sadness disappointments confusions  

Intoxications always something the answer doesn’t  lie in improving the quality of the stuff the real   point of Liberation is to integrate movement  and Stillness to recognize that from the very   beginning you have been a ballerina dancing in  this Exquisite open space endlessly making these  

Marvelous gestures moving in space and that space  is your your own nature the unformed Infinity of   awareness perfectly matches you in every gesture  you make that’s why you present in your existence   we don’t have to think about our existence  somebody might say well what are you doing  

Here ah well I’m here because I’m interested in  bu you start to create a whole story but you’re   just here what are you doing you don’t know who  knows what they’re doing here I don’t know what  

I’m doing here you know I’m just doing something  that’s how life is isn’t it on a good day you   don’t think about it it’s just popping along so  the question of being is solved by being as soon  

As we make being problematic because we think  well I’m not doing it right I have to correct   myself the very Act of correcting yourself always  hides what it is that you have to do in order to  

Just be correct which is to relax and do less less  is more which is why we have meditation which is   just about relaxing relax into space mobilize with  Clarity in the movement and these two forces can   just keep pulsing together pulsing together  all the time that’s all there is opening and  

Closing opening and closing you say to someone  oh let’s have a chat you give them your full   attention and say bye and then you’re off into  something else then you’re off into something   else if you’ve been fully there then you’re  free to go to the next build if you’ve been  

Half there half there when that comes to an end  where are you most of the time we’re like that   completely unintegrated fragmented bits of us  all over the place half of us in the past half  

Of us in the future it’s very difficult man to be  fully in one thing is not to get lost to be fully   in one thing is to be in everything because it’s  the quality of presence and being centered that  

Each thing reveals that it’s always part of  the Stillness out of which it manifest that’s   the real heart of this suici teaching it’s not  enormously complicated what is complicated is the   fact that we’re all buzzing we’re all doing this  drug called ignorance it’s very strong it’s like

Coke we do it all the time hyperventilating  breathing badly you know getting the adrenaline   going getting the frontal loes a bit  out of it we’re buzzing on chemicals   all the time relaxing if you don’t do  anything if you are no one who will you  

Be if you stop being important if  you lost everything who would you be which is why in The Meditation what we want  to just keep doing is letting go so if we do   this simple practice of saying these three Rs  releasing the tension and just sitting what is  

There this stuff now if we can just let the  stuff be stuff some of it seems out there   some of it seems in here somebody is there the  patterns of the stuff are changing thoughts and   feelings and Sensations are arising and passing  what our perceptual field shows us is Shifting  

Who is there the center of our existence is  to be nobody and yet somebody not somebody in   particular but an awareness which is pure from  the very beginning pure means it’s not this or   that it’s everything that’s a very amazing  thing to think that we with our small little  

Lives our anxieties about this and that that we  are everything how can we be everything well you   walk down the street here you can look out and if  the sky is still open you can see the hills where  

Are these Hills well you can say they’re outside  mfield if you look at the hills where are they   they’re with you they are your experience the hill  is you this is you you look at the Moon where is  

The moon is it outside your mind or inside your  mind if it’s outside your mind how does it get   into your mind because now you’re thinking  about the moon so where is the door of your  

Mind does the moon have to pay to get into your  mind or do you pay the mind the moon to get into   your mind how does it get in the moon’s very  big if your mind is in your brain you have a

Problem when you look at the moon it’s immediately  there when you hear the car the car is is in your   mind it’s very strange I often fly about so I  sit in the airplane this airplanes in my mind  

I’m in the airplane and the airplane’s in me it’s  very strange life is very strange it is just very   very strange it doesn’t fit the organizing box  that we have and yet this is how it is so maybe  

My boxes are not so useful maybe the things I  learned in school School are not really telling   me how it is maybe actually allowing the world  to be weird as it is is okay because basically  

It just keeps moving the world was here before we  were born it’ll be here after we die we take our   place for a while in this ongoing drama who  takes a place the aspect of ourselves which   is manifestation now according to the Buddhist  traditional Buddhist teaching we come in contact  

With the Buddhist teachers teachings which  means we have a precious human birth means   at this time in this life we have a chance to  recognize the openness of our existence which   is inseparable from the movement of our existence  that’s called Awakening if you see the two there’s  

Nothing else to be done there’s nowhere else to  go because the movement of life will never take   you out of the spaciousness because they’re  just together it doesn’t matter then if life   is happy or sad often we think happy people are  better off than sad people but the spaciousness  

Of the mind is not made of Happiness it’s not a  gingerbread house it’s not destroyed by sadness   we think from our dualistic position goodness  is wonderful and bad things and sadness that’s   terrible we want to get rid of the bad bits and  have the good bits but the good and the bad come  

From the same Source this is the essential  teaching of nonduality it means there is no   true difference between good and bad there is  no true difference between happiness and sorrow   because they have no inherent self- nature to  them they are contingent somebody tells us a  

Joke and we laugh somebody tells us a sad story  and we cry the tears arise in response to the   story the laughter arises in response to the joke  and then it’s gone and then it’s gone these are  

The moments of experience they arise and they  pass they arise on this open Infinite stage of emptiness they are not different the ground of  everything is open that is to say there are no   entities no things nothing fixed and all  sorts of causes and conditions move within  

That bringing about the various things which  AR we have two possibilities one is to focus   just on what is arising and try to create the  patterns we like and the other is to see it’s the ground human beings are very powerful interferers  if you’re lucky enough ever to go to a place in  

Nature which human beings haven’t done too much  with you’ll always see a lot of mixture because   nature ordinary environmental Nature has lots of  winds and currents in it which bring seeds and all   sorts of things so in the high uh Alpine valleys  you know when Springtime comes there are so many  

Different flowers growing some of these things  that are growing will be called flowers some will   be called Wheats if you bring that into a human  Garden you start to discriminate we like these   flowers we don’t like these Wheats out in the  valley it’s just stuff it’s just stuff the ground  

The Earth supports stuff it doesn’t discriminate  the seed comes the causes and conditions are   right and it comes we in our garden say I want  the Roses I don’t want this other stuff this   other stuff shouldn’t be here it doesn’t belong  here and that’s what we are doing all the time  

So the function of meditation is to trust that  if we allow more weeds they won’t strangle the flowers this requires some courage particularly  if you have a tendency say to anxiety or to   depression where you may feel that a mood can  take you over and there’s an anxiety oh my God  

If I don’t try and control this it’ll be like this  forever I can’t bear it that is the point where we   really have to trust the Buddha’s teaching  on impermanence all things are impermanent   stay with what is arising and you will see that  it is impermanent if you conceptualize it you  

Start to think God I’m still depressed this is  not helping this is not helping I’m just this   is really not helping me I can’t no no no no  no no I’m subing this see you build up these  

Ideas in which you are not looking at what is  there you are telling what is there what it   is you are taking what is there and putting it  into your template into the patterns you have   in your head there is nothing fresh how will  you get enlightened how will you get something  

Immediate direct naked fresh when all you do  is layer it into your own category so in the   practice of meditation we want to just stay with  whatever is there of course we have the habit of   telling ourselves what is there we know what is  there this is stupid this is not meditation I  

Can’t do this this is a waste of time I’ve had  better ways of doing it than this all sorts of   messages arise just stay with them as soon as you  fall into a thought into a concept it will take  

You on a little journey and then you get off  that train and then another thought will come   and they’ll take you on a journey you get off  that bus and another little thought will come   then you’ll be in a taxi and you just sit doing  half an hour of international travel that’s not  

Meditation meditation is just calm and relax and  watch the traffic just watch all this stuff going   you don’t need to travel you’re tired of traveling  just relax Let It Go oh but it’s important and I   I need to remember that that is very poisonous  that is attachment which says the object is the  

Answer the reason for my existence the nature  of my existence is going to be revealed to me   by an impermanent in phenomena and if I don’t  grab it now I’m going to lose out so I better  

Grab it and when you grab it it grabs you and  then you’re gone for a bit and then you’re back again the answer is not in the object whatever  we need is already there this is the central  

Teaching of suction the Buddha where over there  in the corner is called Kango kampo means always   good always already good it means it’s fine it’s  sorted we don’t believe that because we’ve got   so many things to do Christmas is coming how  many more bloody things you got to do shopping  

Presents wrapping enough wrapping paper got the  right sort of seller tape did you send cards to   these people why do people send me cards when I  don’t want to send them cards running out of the   last minute you if you’re a human being you  cannot stop that busyness but what we can do  

Is practice taking it into illusion it’s not  either our it’s not either it’s real or it’s   just an illusion so never mind it’s just what we  do and we do it in spaciousness in emptiness so  

The key thing in the meditation is when you have  the chance stop jumping in the level of jumping   in is when we connect with other people it’s  our participation in the world with others the   level of meditation is to have a small Holiday  from that participation so that you see things  

Will resolve by themselves if you leave a good  thought it will go if you leave a bad thought it   will go you’re actually irrelevant you you’re  not the gardener it’s doing fine without you   it all just goes away so all your busyness  all your importance all your Prejudice all  

The many special tasks you have to do doesn’t  matter because whatever you do it’s going to vanish so now I’ve retired I can just  take it easy H they’re not my kids and the grandparent they’re not mine it’s  just stuff from that likeness of  

Touch the world begins to sing  a little bit because we’re not overinvestment so very important in meditation is  to let all thoughts go if you get some brilliant   insight and understanding just let it go  if you find yourself plagued with negative   difficult thoughts don’t get worried  and agitated because that will act as  

A kind of glue to make them stick just  let them go my mind’s full of shit are you it’s not my ship somebody’s shitting in my mind sooner or later  they’ll stop then the rain will come and wash  

It away but if you think you’re doing it if  you get into the omnipotence that I am the   owner of my mind I am the creator of all that  happens in my mind I am in charge of it and I’m  

Responsible for it and I’m not going to put up  with it any longer then you will be very very busy any thoughts or questions on that what you’re saying about letting thoughts  go it does feel right when Thinking Inside one  

Of the things that anxiety is how far  that would go and how much that would   change my behavior the world that fear  change so much that’s very into a place comfortable back what’s what’s your worst  fantasy what might happen I don’t know I  

Don’t think it’s anything that you can I can be  about it’s just there is it’s going to be very different and he Fe there all the time so there you’ve got an impermanent phenomena  something which comes and goes but every time  

It pops out it’s very scary so you Retreat so  the limit of your existence is an impermanent thought continuing anxiety around well if you keep thinking about it won just to keep with it well I it sounds to me  as if you’re you’re facing this uh fundamental  

Question which is is it up to me the thing about  the ego is that it is a an aspect of our existence   Which experiences itself as autonomous as  separated of as in some some extent self-existing  

And as an agent as one who is acting and of course  in our day-to-day work in the world if we don’t do   things they won’t get done if it’s your checkbook  you have to sign the check nobody else can sign  

The check so there are things which only you can  do therefore if you don’t do them they won’t get   done then something will happen we can use that  experience as a way of saying my existence really

Matters which it doesn’t it doesn’t of course if  we die today someone else would take over all the   things we do even when big big powerful people  die life goes on so we are fairly small people  

Not so much as dependent on us some people will  weep soap tears for a while and then Life Will   Go On and they’ll have a story oh my daddy died  when I was this age or that age but their lives  

Will go on so of course many things will change  if we vanish and yet life will still go on it will   go on as it goes on not according to our plans  but of course our plans don’t often get carried  

Through anyway so there’s a story in our head  that we are able to make a lot of things happen   when natur we’re just rather good at moving with  the forces just like a politician changing their   position according to circumstances but doing it  with confidence so part of it is in meditation  

When you get close to that point of anxiety just  stay St as relaxed as possible very close to the   anxiety not falling into it but not trying to  get rid of it as something negative and see what happens because right all the way through your  existence you’ve been losing yourself who you  

Were when you are five doesn’t exist  now it’s gone you were five you did all   these things you had these toys you’re  not really playing with them too much now so it’s gone you’ve lost yourself a thousand  times isn’t that amazing all these people that  

We were all these obsessions and things that  we were really into is gone so if you’re still   here having lost yourself who is the one  who is still here because it can’t be the   self that you think you are now I mean that’s  that’s the heart of this that we we are both  

The Emptiness of our situation and the fullness  but the fullness says yes this is me this is me   this is me but actually it’s always Vanishing  it’s only the emptiness that is reliable and stays so really looking into that and trusting oh  

The Emptiness is more reliable than the  impermanent story that tell me they’re fo any other thoughts absolutely think if we if we can experience that what’s  occurring for us is a kind of theater or a  

Kind of dream then you can have a memory of  a dream but if you remember your dream very   accurate it doesn’t doesn’t make your dream real  you have a strong memory of a dream experience if  

You go to the cinema and you really like the  film and you can remember the film in detail   and you’re telling it to someone yeah  and then you did this and then it did   that that doesn’t make it real it was always  a movie so our memories are always memories of

Movies we feel that we remember real  events that really happened but it   yes it really happened in the manner  of a dream in the manner of a movie   so they useful fictions they’re useful  fictions everything is a useful fiction   everything is fiction it’s confectionary  it’s artifice it’s a construct of some

Kind so telling ourselves holding ourselves in  place by our our memories is is wonderful because   it gives us a way of having an interface with  other people so that their dream world and our   dream world can somehow meet together and you  have some communication but it doesn’t make it

Real in the word real is linked to this  Latin root that that speaks of an entity   something which exists in and of itself but  from a Buddhist point of you nothing exists   in and of itself everything is dependent on  other situations so part of our memory is of  

Course how the brain functions if you get  a big hit on the front of your head you’re   going to lose a bit of memory maybe forever  and maybe in a short time so what we think   is ours my mind is actually an interplay of  awareness and brain functioning it’s not my  

Quality quality my memories so when we start  to lose our memory a bit as people do as they   get older they start to lose words and they find  their grammars getting a bit funny what are they   losing they’re losing something which was there  for a while due to causes and circumstances and  

Is now not going to be there so you you could  have a sort of bell curve like you’re a little   infant and there’s not much capacity and then  you get this big thing in the middle period  

Of your life where you can do most things and  then you go into a kind of Decline and then if   you live a long time and you get Alzheimer’s  there not much left which was the most real bit it was all real but one was  a more elaborated dream than

Another and so what is what is the function  of being in the richness of our dream it’s   maybe to connect with other people and  to recognize that it is indeed a dream   so memories are useful but many people become  persecuted they think oh I used to be young I  

Used to be like this I used to be so beautiful  I used to have all these opportunities and now   what’s happening to me that doesn’t really  help anything because I like the person I  

Was when I was 30 that was the best year of my  life and in remembering that I give myself a   true definition of what I should be but I  can no longer be what I should be so I’ve   lost myself but we’re always losing ourselves  and so if if memory makes us retrospective  

Then it becomes very uh disorganizing because  actually the only place we can live is now and   the question is if I am fully in wherever  I am I’ve got the best chance of having an interface but if if we use our memory to tell  

Us I’m in the wrong place my life  hasn’t worked out the way it should have a lot of that work is done by memory  so memory in a sense is something we have   to hand it’s like in a kitchen you’ve  got different kinds of knives you’ve  

Got chopping boards different kinds of pots  and sauce band for cooking different things   we have all sorts of experiences in our  lives and part of it is how do we bring   these together in the moment to cook what’s  required now but if we have memories which  

Insist and seem to to dominate then we’re not  free to make use of all the utensils all the ingredients what well to we’ve been looking  at that all all the day really the the the   experience of what is happening now depends on  a whether we’re a bit open and relaxed and in  

Touch with it and what is the quality of the  ingredients you know you can go you can go   to the theater to see a wonderful play but if  you’re boyfriend’s just dumped you beforehand   you’re not going to enjoy it very much you know  you will be filled up with something you won’t  

Be available you’ll be preoccupied so in many  ways the quality of the experience determined   by can you really be there can you be there in  the sense of yes that kind of hungry devouring  

Being there or can you be there in a relaxed way  that allows it to be however it is with a bit of   space because very often we we confuse intensity  with awareness that Things become real because   they’re intense and I’m working on a project  just now with um teenagers who cut themselves  

And you know always the stories are about the  the tension between boredom and intensity life’s   boring Life’s a drag I want intensity I seek  intensity the situation always screws up I   can’t bear it so I cut myself and then round and  round these familiar Vicious Cycles but intensity  

Is not value intensity is a kind of blindness a  kind of throwing oneself into something so that   the compacting of it gives us the felt sense  I’m alive but I’m alive in a rather fraught   way I’m not alive and that there are almost  no choices in in these intense moments they  

They’ve got a a driven directionality in them  so there are many many factors that determine   the quality of our experience what’s happening in  the experiential field our state and whether we   have any space or not because if we have space  difficult times are not so bad if we have no  

Space if difficult times are all there is people  get crazy I can’t fucking be it I should have a   better life than this why have you got that and  I have you see people just winding themselves up it’s it’s very difficult it’s not fair  I’m going to die and I’ve never had these  

Things and you there’s no space at all it’s  very terrifying for people who are trapped in   these states it’s just awful there’s no mediating  distance there’s no internal space of reflection   it’s all too much so uh the quality of experience  you know there are many vectors running across

That you say something more  about how not to confuse the body being yeah what people want and what they need is not  always the same and uh with the position of   being a servant from The bodh satv Vow saying  I will help all beings to gain in Lightman if  

You meditate and you study the Dharma and you  deepen your practice you will start to know a   bit more about what that means so if somebody  comes and asks you for something and says I  

Really need this they may be wrong and to be able  to say no to them may be very helpful this is why   in the Tibetan tradition we have these wrathful  Buddhas there’s somebody surrounded with flames  

With a big dagger in his hand this person will  stab you you say please give me this I want it   he says die what’s he going to kill he’s going to  kill your elusory sense that you need it all the  

Children who will be whining and whining before  Christmas I need this oh come I have that I want   that I want that come the end of Janu say hey  Jimmy why haven’t you been playing that I don’t  

Like it it’s not the one I wanted what we want  is not necessarily anything more than a momentary   infatuation so being the servant of beings is  to hold in mind all beings have Buddha nature   which is infinite and open and always fresh and  they also have a lack of presencing in what they  

Really are so the task of helping others is help  to help them to waken up to where they already are   not necessarily to take them anywhere else and  if we go back to I was suggesting earlier the  

Answer doesn’t lie in the object usually people  ask for something what do you want Oh I need   this I need that I need help to get a disability  allance I need this I need to rehousing I need I  

Need I need on one level all these needs are  true but the reality is the person hasn’t a   clue who they are they’re just mouthing all these  momentary impulses and anxieties that are coming   through and tremendously trying to devour  things from the world get what they want not  

Get what they don’t want if you give them what  they say they want that won’t necessarily help them perhaps what one can do is try to give  people what they want and stay with them as   they experience the fact that it’s not what  they wanted so that they can start to see  

That they should trust themselves in fact  the best gift you can give to people is to   help them doubt themselves self-doubt is not  the same as low self-esteem self-doubt here   means switching the light on and thinking  what am I up to I’ve been round the block  

A few times and I’m still banging my head on  the wall something funny is going on here I   can’t trust myself that’s a wonderful thing  to realize I’m a bit nuts I’m off if I’m off  

The best thing I can do is slow down why am I  doing this I don’t know why but I want to oh oh why I don’t know I’ll just do it fabulous  slogan isn’t it just do it can you IM imagine  

You know this is the point where the race of homo  sapiens became lemings just do it here’s a cliff   we’re running let’s do it whoa that’s it that’s  what just do it invade Iraq just do it Afghanistan  

Just do it burn up all the pension money just do  it close the hospitals just do it why not just do   it we won’t get blanked they’re all cowards just  do it throw your life away just do it this at this  

Very time people will be sitting in rooms opening  bottles of pills just do it can’t bear it any   longer I’ll kill myself just do it cut yourself  home just do it just do it why just do it there’s  

No thinking involved in just doing it there’s  no tension there’s no nothing what we have to   do is to say to people think be with yourself  try to see that life is much more complicated  

I can’t bear it any longer so I’m going to kill  myself why where do you think you’re going when   you die I don’t care you’re de it’s like you know  it’s people really don’t know they don’t want to

Think we’re going to have new missiles nuclear  missiles what a wonderful thing to have why   would we want to have these things to protect us  ourselves do they protect us we of course they do   what evidence do you have for that nice guidelines  research you know we have evidence-based we didn’t  

Have a nuclear war with the Russians therefore  they saved us therefore we should have more of   them human beings suffer from over intelligence  we are much too creative our minds are burning off   all the time all this stuff so when we encounter  human beings the main thing we should try to do  

Is calm them down calm them down it’s okay  sweetie don’t worry it’ll be fine you don’t   need to do that you don’t actually need very much  what you do need to know is what is the basis out  

Of which the thought comes which says I need this  who is the one who needs that is the real gift of   the bod SAA to help the person to see that the  the ground of our being is infinite is always  

Satisfied and yet impulses arise which indicate  we are not satisfied who is the we it is a thought so it’s it’s quite an important thing  to to think about well what really is the task  

What is Awakening what what do we need to do  to ourselves to be more awake do we need to   try harder we might think oh the people of  mfield would benefit from having a stoer on  

Top of one of the hills so what we need to do  is to collect money and then go and buy the   land and make it flat and build a stoer and then  we can go there every week and burn some lamps  

And walk around it this is a good way to pass  the time between birth and death but it’s not   very necessary you won’t find the nature of  your mind in a stuper you will only find the  

Nature of your mind if you look at your mind so  if you think that the thoughts in your mind your   holy Dara thoughts of how you can help things  to develop are important you will fall into the  

Thought and the thought will take you through the  land of your mind but the blinds will be down you be and you don’t not see anything the thought is  arising only from emptiness it has nowhere else to  

Come from and that’s really the the body sa for  work there’s a famous story of a it’s a kadampa   story of a monk who went to his teacher saying  he was troubled by bad thoughts and the teacher  

Said okay take these two PES of stones some white  stones and some black stones and every time you   have a a bad thought put a black stone in front  of you and after a month he came to his teacher  

And said it’s terrible it’s not helping me I just  have this mountain of black Stones teacher said   trust me go back sit with the practice observe  your mind and gradually as the years went by the   number of black Stones went down until eventually  he had only white stones only good thoughts in  

His head she goes back to the teacher says  oh now my mind is pure he said what what’s   pure about your mind you don’t know what your  mind is now you have to go back and recognize   there is no difference between good thoughts  and bad thoughts it’s only when we recognize  

That that we step out of relative truth you know  Christianity Islam Judaism they’re all about the   same in saying it’s better to be a better a good  person than a bad person it’s better to try to   have good thoughts you should be hardworking you  should be courageous you should be generous no  

Religion saying you shouldn’t be any of these  things the big difference with Buddhism is it   says and it’s all in the manner of a dream  so although on the relative truth level it’s   better to be a good person than a bad person from  the absolute level there is no difference between  

Them there is no difference between a Buddha  and an ordinary person that’s really important   to realize you can make yourself a better person  you can’t make yourself a Buddha you are already   as full of Buddha nature as you need to be you  simply need to awaken to your Buddha nature it  

Is not constructed it’s not made your Deeds are  made you can practice being more generous you can   think on the daily basis I will be more generous  to people I will smile at strangers in the street  

I’ll give people more of my time and so on you  can consciously do that but that thought will not   make you a Buddha buddhahood is Awakening which  is to say to recognize the empty nature of all phenomena any other thoughts or questions it just  seems to me everything about Western culture is to  

To thinking itself m the minute um children are  born we’re you know encouraging them to to to   seek stimulation and S when five parents want  to know if they’re going to get to University   when you personally realize the kind of the  Reas suffering is this mental it’s a you know  

Great Revelation and a great privilege I think  to actually discover but it’s when you you become   much more aware even though you’re only working  on yourself on a very small way you just become   much more aware of how other people are suffering  in this you Badness but actually um transferring  

To them the idea that um you know to to look at  what they’re doing is is is not easy because it’s   so alien isn’t it to Western Minds so you know  sometimes you you know you might very gentle  

S you know maybe if you just kind of sit with  it and they’re just you know it’s almost like   they’re addicted to thought one as being on it’s  a big shift to make isn’t it it is indeed a very  

Big shift and and of course it’s not that we  it’s not that thoughts in themselves are bad   it’s exactly The Addictive quality you know it’s  something about how can we play with thoughts and   also the fear of thinking that they’re under the  um the Mastery of thoughts because people will say  

I can’t stop thinking and that’s their burden  isn’t it and indeed we can’t stop thinking and   this is this is why it’s very I think these  suction teachings are enormously important   because to stop the arising in thoughts  on your mind is generally to make yourself

Stupid it’s not that thought is a problem what is  a problem is being immersed in thought as if it   was the only game in town it’s the same like say  with alcohol there are some people who can have a  

Drink and there’s some people who drink to get  drunk drinking to get drunk someone sitting in   their lonely bedset you know with a two bottles  of white wine from the supermarket that’s not   having a drink that’s drowning and it’s the same  way thoughts arise in the mind and they are part  

Of this creativity and freedom of expression  of ourselves they’re part of this movement   of these Reflections in the mirror but if we are  intoxicated with our thoughts if we are addicted   to them if we drowning in our thoughts merged  in them then we’re just bumping around in these  

Things and we’re never getting out of it and then  we think God stop this fucking noise in my head   I can’t bear it but it’s not the thought that the  problem is the fact that you don’t know how to be  

At ease with the thought the thoughts are coming  and going the thoughts are just coming and going   but you what happens with people in that state  is they’re all attending to the impact of the   thought and they’re not watching that it’s going  it’s like the game that kids used to play you know  

Running up and banging on someone’s door and then  when they come to open that you run away the kids   have already gone there’s no point in shouting the  Street’s empty the thoughts have gone but if you  

Oh if they come back here they oh I’m going to get  them they’re gone you’ve lost it just let them go   thoughts are self- liberating oh I don’t need to  get rid of them so who is it who is experiencing  

The thought I am and it’s that’s the glue that’s  the the false identification that says I am the   thinker of my thought rather than The Shining  radiant Clarity of the empty aspect of the Mind   illuminates thoughts feelings and Sensations as  they manifest and when we do that then we start  

To get some relief but it’s as you say in our  Western culture it doesn’t give any encouragement   in that direction okay shall we take a break  there and we’ll come back and do some sitting okay so we do some more practice this  uh very simple but very useful practice  

We did before stitching skeleton carrying  the weight our gaze is out into the space   in front of us we’re not staring at the  far wall but just letting the eyes rest   in the space as we allow the spaciousness  of the environment and the spaciousness  

Within ourselves to link and we make  this sound R three times and R just   releases all conceptualizations all energetic  charging out into the atmosphere just letting go now of course we may feel well that’s not  doing anything for me I’m so caught caught  

Up in all this stuff how is just saying I  going to get rid of it well who is saying   I am so caught up in it that’s a thought  where is that thought gone where is that  

Thought gone every time some voice in our cell  says it hasn’t worked or it’s impossible or I   don’t understand that observe that thought  and it’s gone if you believe the thought   if you allow it to mesmerize you will  fall into it and then it will appear to  

Be true because of the Resonance of what it  says it will feel true all even though it’s gone we have a royal family her gracious  Majesty the queen queen of what you know   come on she’s still the queen but she’s  not queen of anything except her private  

Income which is vast she doesn’t do anything  in Parliament she doesn’t rule or Reign Over   anything the Australians don’t even want her  to come and visit anymore you know things can   appear to be real to have a value because we’re  all suckers H we all we make them real we see  

This with the whole Cult of Personality you  know all these people who are empty and who   are pumped up in all sorts of ways to appear  very important and then because they appear   important people take them as important and then  think about them although they’re completely

Vapid that is exactly what our thoughts  are like that’s why reading magazines   like heat and hello are very very helpful  the more trashy the magazine the more it   shows you how mad things are or by  the daily sport where they have a  

Special event is being able to see some  rock stars knickers as they get out of a car no there there’s a really fascinating thing so here’s something which is clearly not  in the least importance to anyone anywhere in  

The planet it’s not going to do anything about  anything and yet it is made important so if   these empty meaningless stories like you know  these celebrity get me out of here or the Big   Brother house these are fascinating to watch  empty meaningless nonsense which starts to  

Shine you know Tibetans have this story or the  saying that even a dog’s tooth will give out   light if you have faith but you know even Jordan’s  silicon tits will seem amazing if you’re a stupid man it’s like that you you polish something  and it’ll start to shine that if you can if  

You can really see that functioning in the world  that’s what happens in your head that’s what makes   meditation very difficult because we ourselves  are polishing bits of coal and thinking that it’s   really shiny so the key thing is stop polishing  when we think we can’t do it that’s because we  

Got too much elbow grease we are convinced somehow  that it is important our practice now is to let   it go let it go we don’t need any of this stuff  we don’t need these thoughts but if I don’t have  

These thoughts in my head who will I be well  that’s what what we’re trying to see clearly   in response to Kevin’s earlier remark you won’t be  yourself you’ll be something else you’ll be in a   more open and relaxed State than you ordinarily  are so it will feel strange it will feel

Unfamiliar but maybe that will be better so  the practice with the three art is just to   relax and whenever you find yourself tangling  back in getting preoccupied running story   lines just let them go let them go today’s  newspaper has no news worthy of print black  

Pages land Pages you go out shopping and you  come home empty-handed there wasn’t anything   I wanted what do you want this stuff for  it’s comforting it’s reassuring it gives   you something to do something to worry about  something to be on about if you let go of it  

Life will be different you’re not going to  get my the roof’s not going to fall in here   we are sitting in the room it’s quite safe  rainy afternoon in mfield we can just open  

Up a bit of space yeah so we do this three hour  and we sit for a while just being with whatever   is there and whenever it gets tight just relax  into the out breath and then just continue with it Okay and there are several things which are very  important in that practice the first is that   presence is always now it can’t be going  backwards if your mind becomes heavy if you   get lost as soon as you wake free from that you  just move on on there’s nothing to be gained by  

Going back and looking at something it’s there  are no mistakes whatever was there has gone and   when it was there it offered an opportunity to  be present with it when it’s gone it doesn’t   offer that opportunity anymore so its value or  usefulness is over if you start thinking why did  

That happen I shouldn’t have done that this is  hopeless all you’re doing is pulling together   together a series of thoughts and weaving together  a construction of what has happened so it’s very   much about trusting that the freshness of the  moment is the result itself we’re not trying  

To be anywhere to enter any other state other  than the possibility of being with whatever   is there so sometimes the mind is dull or heavy  or sleepy just be with that and if you start to  

Vanish fin then you come back as soon as you’re  back that’s gone and you’re here and just keep   practicing staying very gently with whatever is  there remember the content of the mind doesn’t   Define your value therefore don’t worry about the  content of the mind it’s just the content of the

Mind but if you start to think it shouldn’t be  happening I don’t want it this way if you start   to become actively trying to change it that in  some ways good intention will itself be become  

A bridge or a glue that will bind you into over  attention to the content of your mind leading to   a forgetfulness of the relaxed spaciousness so  just again and again sometimes you can sit for   hours in this kind of meditation and sometimes  it seems just like nothing’s happening at all  

What is happening is what is happening  it’s not special it’s not like in in a   tantric practice where you would visualize  a deity and there are rays of light coming   out of the deity and you’re saying prayers  and making offerings there’s something to be  

Done there something that seems very shiny and  important and holy and special here we’re just   observing the natural liberation of all phenomena  there is no catching whatever you try to catch   whatever tries to catch you just slips away  it’s very simple any thoughts about that any

Questions question about what you were talking  about earlier that’s all right okay um are   accepting the world as it is and taking action to  make it better necessarily in opposition and what   do you think of the engaged Buddhist respect  well it always depends on what is the basis  

Out of which one moves uh that thought that  we all suffer from five poisons stupidity or   mental dullness aversion or hatred aggression  desire greed uh attachment pride and jealousy   since we all have these five we shouldn’t be  surprised that people act in these ways so the  

First thing is not to be surprised that property  developers are nasty and unkind that people want   to sell soer to McDonald’s are willing to cut  down forests you know selfishness shouldn’t   surprise us it’s what our world is built on and  so part of the question is if we’re going to  

Be engaged Buddhist what is the goal is the goal  to stop the activity of others or to help others awaken you see I mean if if you’re in Green  Piece and you drive your little boat in front  

Of a big Whaler you may save the whale but  you make the Whalers pretty pissed off you   increase their anger and aversion so is that  skillful or unskillful I mean unskillful means   are means which help the people over on this  side but say fuck you to the people on that  

Side so if we say actually we want to help all  sentient beings it becomes quite difficult to   think who how can I go about being useful to  all beings which would mean being without Edge   without prejudice that’s that’s really quite  difficult so I think it’s it’s a wonderful  

Thing to be an Engaged Buddhism in Buddhist but  what are you going to engage with and how you   going to do it um how should we stop other people  doing things in the time of the Vietnam War some   Vietnamese B monks burnt themselves alive as  a gesture towards stopping war is that Noble  

Is that virtuous is that insane is that crazy  what is that it’s it’s often very difficult   to know what what actions are so there’s a  difference between condoning how the world   is agreeing going along with being a fellow  traveler and situations and developing the  

Precision necessary to bring about real change  um oh that’s very nice soothing balm for the soul that’s all right yeah I’m sure we can find better things  to be mortified about so I mean there’s a story  

Of and I’m aware we were going to stop a bit  earlier so I won’t go too much on because some   of you probably have plans but there’s a story  of milerapa some of you may know this story where  

Towards the end of his life he had many students  in meditation and they came to him one day and   said Master shouldn’t we you know we’ve been in  these caves for a long time shouldn’t we go and  

Help the people in the valley because they don’t  understand any Dharma and he said well if you were   to wait in the cave five more years and Carry Your  meditation through to its proper result do you   imagine then when you go into the valley there’ll  be nobody left to save and there’s something  

About if we’re going to be engaged Buddhist what  capacity would need to be ripe in us to really be   able to practice a kind of nonviolence one has to  have quite a capacity and the danger is that one Buddhist is to become a disengaged Buddhist  first if you’re a Buddhist who can disengage  

From this treadmill of action reaction action  reaction then you have the basis for engaging   so I don’t think there’s a contradiction but uh  to marry the two successfully so that wisdom and   compassion are really flowing in the same  direction means you have to be profoundly  

Self-critical about illusions of having arrived  someplace because the worst thing really in buddh   ism is to substitute Dogma for experience to  substitute empty blah blah from it actually   being at your fingertips is the we can so  easily cheat ourselves we learn something  

That runs around in our head and then we think  we’ve got it but all we’re doing is creating smok screens okay one last question then will  come to an end for today ear question about being meeting others people don’t necessarily um their needs are not  necessarily appropriate or right um but we can’t  

Make judgments about other people’s needs so  isn’t this appropriate to respond you think   can help well it’s an in question I think I was  talking about the difference between um wants and   needs or desires and needs you know and and often  we don’t know for ourselves the difference between  

A desire or something that we want and something  that we actually need we mention disability yeah of their survival so surely well not  necessarily I think in the therap well it   can be but in the Therapeutic Community  I’m connected with I think the fact that  

They have a disability officer who comes  around every week is probably one of the   most harmful things in that Therapeutic Community  because it maintains people with the idea I need   to be taken care of Society expects nothing  of me society would actually like me to sit  

In my room and kill myself that’s what society  would really like because ther Community costs   a lot of money you know I’m not a productive  member of society now it seemed to me if you   really want to help people there are so many  things that we could do that would involve  

Lots of other people so many people have been made  irrelevant so what is the real need can be in par sure having safy while other are sure  alongside these people to enable them   to become more autonomous that’s true but if you  have a choice between working and finding some  

Sense of identity through participation and  being taken care of many people will choose   to be taken care of and that being taken care  of situation is not very uh beneficial I would   say now that’s a judgment and goes back to your  question well am I entitled to make a judgment  

About other people well of course one can be  patronizing one can feel that one knows best but I’m willing to be patronizing and no best  I’m willing to say I’m willing to say that to   be made irrelevant when there is a lot to be  done is a ghastly ghastly fate and that that  

That the invitation into participation has to  be sweetheart wake up there’s something to be   done it’s like kard says you know the the  beauty of suffering is that it calls us to   do something there is something to be done and if  you anesthetize people if you make them suffer in  

Silence rather than scream then it the world goes  dead we can use people’s screams so your life’s   fucking difficult what are we going to do what are  we going to do I’ll be here with you what are we  

Going to do there an invitation to come in and  get on with it rather than oh it’s so hard and   it’s so difficult and just sit in your corner and  don’t cause any trouble and I think we do abandon  

Lots of people in that way you know same with  this whole thing about asbos you know disturb   teenagers they need somebody to meet them in some  way and they need to get on with something I mean  

When I was 16 I had a lot of energy and you know  I was lucky enough growing up in Scotland having   a bite riding out in the Hills camping out doing  all these things swimming a lot and if you live  

In a shitty environment where these things might  be looked down on what do you do with all that you   know if you’re 16 you got a lot of testosterone  you’re bumping up and down with the damn stuff you  

Know you got you know it’s it’s crazy it’s it’s  something that we say to these young people you   relevant and of course a spiritual practice means  that that always you’re relevant if we you know to  

Take the body sa for vow means every moment Every  Breath You Take there is value in what you do the   body sa for Value vow adds value to everything  so part of our question I think is how can we  

Help people add value to their lives even if on  the level of manifest activity they can’t do very   much you know they also serve who simply stand and  wait you know there’s something about that in in a   disability however it is there’s something about  opening the heart and being for the other and  

The danger is that we get into a poor me and that  poor me is a kind of imploding feeling hard done   by less than both angry and ashamed which I see in  so many people rather than there is a way to to be

Here don’t have any big answers about how  one will go about doing it but it does   seem to me that we can betray people  by saying I don’t expect anything of you okay so we can do a last little sit and   then we’ll end for today and  start tomorrow morning at 10:

We can just do this for quite a short period  of time because this kind of relaxation is   very useful just to enter into it to open  and then continue with the movement of   your life it’s not a state apart rather  it’s to open the space of participation [Applause] Pati [Applause] a a Give one de Okay okay if we begin just a little quiet sitting  just taking a simple focus of attention your   breath or a simple point in front of you and uh  allowing the mind to relax peacefully on that so just to recap briefly  The View that was presented

Yesterday our own our own real nature uh the  immediate giveness of how our existence presents   itself is something which is all always open and  always full the openness is the indeterminacy of   having a situation in which we exist but we  can’t say what it is to be existing we can’t  

Say what is the what are the final determinants  of our existence because it’s always illusive   it’s always slipping away when we try to say  what we are there’s always more to say there’s   always more to say we can’t sum ourselves  up because we are not a thing we are Beyond

Totalization this quality is grounded in the  Buddhist notion of emptiness that fundamentally   there is an absence of inherent self- nature  or ultimate definability in everything we   experience ourselves all the elements of the  environment around us tables chairs and so   on all of these are constructs which exist  according to Conventional uses of Concepts  

We glue the world together we concretize the world  according to the patterns and assumptions that we have this description is not about metaphysics  though it can sound like that it’s actually the   result of an applied phenomenology  which is the practice of meditation  

But until we develop our practice  it’s as if these are just abstract ideas this openness is always full of something  there’s always something going on there’s a   ceaseless flow of experience that experience  is direct and immediate and ungraspable when  

We try to concretize it we lose it and  we’re left with an empty shell that shell   is the traces of memories thoughts and feelings  through which we construct The Narrative of Our Lives according to the Buddhist tradition long long ago in the very beginning  and Moment by moment ignorance operates as the  

Wavering or delusion or mistaking of of the  indestructible integration of openness and   the flow of experience M taking this to be a  sequence of real separate events which present   themselves to a real conrete subject I me  myself live in a world which is like this  

And this and this and as a consequence have this  and this kind of experience I am this that is that this dualization this separation of a subject from  the field of experience with the concretization   or the objectification of both the object and the  subject their reification their establishment for  

Us as things means then that this particular  shape that we experience ourselves having is   then encountering a world of different shapes  trying to find a niche trying to find moments   of Correspondence that will optimize my chance  of achieving the fullness of my being but the  

Fullness of being as felt in terms of limitation  so instead of relaxing into an openness one is   concerned to protect one’s contouring without  having too many corners knocked off so there’s   a a kind of weariness and hunger as we  move towards the environment trying to  

Appropriate that which appeals to us or seems to  complete us and trying to reject that which puts   us into question or undermines the seeming  continuity of our existence as something as such so we then find ourselves in this situation  which tradition is called samsara uh in the  

Tibetan tradition samsara is translated um as  Cora which means to go round and round it’s a   situation in which things are recycled again  and again and we being somewhat enthusiastic   and naive consumers are caught up in each wave  of production as if it was fresh it’s that if  

You were to read the back numbers of Vogue  magazine for the last 20 years you would see   these cycles of mini skirts and leather  and then PVC and then stilettos and flat   heels and it just goes round and round and  round in the same way our enthusiasms and  

Our hopes and fears just go round and round so  same old crap the five poison being recycled   again and again but each time it appears  very fresh this season we’re presenting hango so in that way there’s a kind of  intoxication an intoxication or attachment  

Which is the glue whereby we become fascinated  by things which we know are actually devoid of   inherent value we allow ourselves to be deluded  because of the basic proposition anything is   better than nothing nothing is the big fear  that there will be just some empty void a  

Desolation and Abyss the the abject condition of  falling out of the dreamed of Hope the paradise   falling through a gap in which all that seem  to uh contain and reassure and validate our   existence is experienced as a bunch of empty  signifiers as insubstantial as the fluff on the  

Dandelion at the end of its life and that the  Winds of Fate just blow us hither and thither   and in that fear we cling we want to hang on to  something and it doesn’t really matter what it  

Is and that is truly desolate that we sail our  soul for a mess of pottage give me give me give   me a man after midnight doesn’t matter what he’s  like I’m not going home alone tonight and and we  

Do that with anything it doesn’t really matter  what it is we’ll just take anything because it   is too awful to be alone but of course we’re not  really alone what we are is lonely because lonely   is the Tilt in ourselves as the subject seeking  an object for completion the object will make me  

Whole this is the primary delusion of Samsung s  this is what makes us terribly vulnerable because   we think the answer to my problems is somewhere  else and so we go looking here looking there we  

Might look for it in sport in diet in fashion in  love in alcohol all sorts of things can appear to   provide the solution a nice holiday a new book a  better quality of Television a new kind of study  

Program if only I can really get into that I  will be taken out of myself and through that   return to myself but I’m returned to myself with  extra stuff so that I never quite fit into myself  

The more we develop ourselves it’s very easy to be  more alienated because what has been developed has   been more hooks for conceptual interest there  is no fate worse than being an intellectual   because everything becomes fascinating and that  Fascination is the Royal Road to dissatisfaction  

Because there is always more and so you live  in the realm of Tantalus you know there’s it’s   always horizonal gesturing out and out and out  and the magnum opus the final completed work   can never arrive we see this in this Dreadful  academic Convention of endless footnotes and  

Referring to other people so that one’s voice  is always inhabited by other people’s voices   it’s a a bizarre Dimension that the simple Act of  speaking meaningfully in a way that other people   can hear is not enough you have to add value to  the immediacy of direct human contact to the very  

Moment of aliveness and by adding that value  it’s devalued and turned into something Tous   and deadly for example if I’m talking here it’s  very nice if I can see people’s faces because I’m   talking to you I’m not talking to myself I have  no need to say these things to myself I’m talking  

To you this is not like an academic conference  in conferences people rudely going and out all   the time they get bored and they go off for a p  or a fag or something and the person just keeps   reading their paper they’re not talking to anyone  except their hope of publication and some points  

For progression in the academic system a lot of  talking is not directed to anything to anyone or   in Bin’s terms it’s to some super addressy who’s  never in the room this mysterious other with a big  

O who is the real person that we want to connect  with and in that elevation of our gaze we miss   the very people who are there because speaking to  people means to find oneself really not needing  

Too many words because what is speaking about the  connection of the heart and when we connect with   the heart we don’t need anything from the other  because we find that we’re peaceably returned   to ourselves the other doesn’t complete us if  we connect with them actually we have nothing  

To give each other but when we connect with each  other we can find ourselves at home what is the   home of the mind it is infinity our mind itself  that is to say the basic noetic capacity with  

Which we experience our existence is ungraspable  when we sit in practice and we look for the mind   what color is the mind what shape is the Mind  where does it come from where does it stay where  

Does it go to there is nothing to be found what we  are is something Beyond thought and yet thoughts   arise Sensations arise movement arises so this  mysterious weird strange unly kind of removal   from The Familiar allows us to become familiar  with that which we will never be familiar with  

That is to say Enlightenment or Awakening is not  something you can take for granted you can’t be   complacent about it it’s not like having a nice  book that you can enjoy and then put on your  

Shelf it’s not like having a painting that you  can hang on the wall and every time you see it   it makes you feel good because that’s relating to  an object Awakening is about being present in a   state which never vanishes but a state which  doesn’t vanish because you don’t have it you  

Don’t have Enlightenment I have a watch I can put  my watch on or I can take my watch off but even   if I take my watch off and put it down it’s still  my watch I can have a thought about my childhood  

Or I can have a thought of what I have to do on  Monday I can allow that thought to go from my mind   and and then the thought will come back into my  mind objects come and go and we move them around  

And they seem to have roughly the same value as  they come hither and thither but awareness is not   like that everything that we call the subject  is actually an object we are not awaken to the   true nature of subjectivity because we live in the  state of false substitution of momentary entities  

For True openness and awareness awareness itself  is not active it’s not doing anything yesterday   we were talking about intentionality which is  the direction of the self subject I as a an   individual something individuated cut off from  the field of experience tilted towards something  

Else in that state there is something to be  done I have to be about something but even in   the process of being about something there is  a meta awareness uh of what is going on unless  

We’re very drunk or very aroused usually the  light is on the light is often in the form of   an internal dialogue many people live their  lives with A continuous commentary about who   they are and what they are that’s a rather dull  light but it is nonetheless a sense of there is  

The performativity of existence and then there  is an observer or an awareness of that when the   obser is already inhabited by a voice which has  rified itself turned itself into a thing then you  

Have in your head a critical judge who is passing  a commentary on yourself so I am doing this but I   could be doing it better or fuck why did I forget  to do that so there’s a kind of internal zooming  

Around of these positions this is not awareness  awareness is calm and clear and never moves the   Mind itself is not a thing it’s not an energy  it is the integration of awareness and space   it’s like the room itself this room exists as a  space and in this space many things can come and  

Go the furniture can be moved around people could  dance and sing they could lie down as if they were   dead all sorts of things could be done in this  room because space offers a Hospitality the more  

Furniture you have in the room and especially the  more delicate Furniture you have in the room the   more careful you have to be if we were to put a  white carpet on the floor here we would need to  

Be more careful with tea this is what happens  when we become neurotic we become anxious and   worried about staining ourselves it’s the  problem with a white sweater is in very dangerous so when we become fragile we feel  everything’s going to Mark us and so there’s  

A kind of hypervigilance and word that you see  again and again in tibetan is vajra vajra means   indestructible what is indestructible our mind  is indestructible that means our mind is not   neurotic our anxiety our fear our worry our sense  of value our high self-esteem low self-esteem all  

The familiar constituents of ourselves are not  our true nature because they are all impermanent   contingent that is to say created and dependent  on a variety of circumstances and susceptible to   change what is indestructible is awareness itself  however awareness because it’s like space is  

Something we don’t usually attend to when we come  into the room we look around and what do we see we   see the color of the walls we see the paintings  we see the people we don’t usually attend to the  

Shaping of space when I look out at you I see the  shapes around you the shapes of the space just as   you would in looking at a painting you have  some image which is figural and then you have  

The background and the background is contributing  to the presencing of what is figural so we have as   it were space in this room which seems to be displ  placed by the presence of people’s bodies it looks  

Like space is what is left over when the real  event appears as if space was some kind of backing   group it just kind of gets the crowd warmed up  and then the main thing comes on aha it’s me so  

We take up space and space we expect to just sort  of back off and not cramp our style that’s not   really what it is this is this is The Madness of  ignorance because actually we are the children of  

Space our real nature is space we are ungraspable  we have all these stories about ourselves but they   don’t sum us up so from the practice of suen the  key thing is to start to live in the presence of  

The moment and to accept the absolute impermanence  and flow of all phenomena to move from control and   avoidance towards a lived vibrant participation  which means never being sure never being settled   why do we want to be settled what is the value of  safety things were are always occurring what can  

You secure what are you going to nail it to Samara  is a state of terrible amateurish DIY in which   we’re all trying to nail ourselves onto secure  territory with drills and we’re putting it through   our toes and through our eyeballs you know we’re  all pinning ourselves to things that just doesn’t  

Work you put something on the shelf and it falls  down you create a sense of who you are you think   you’ve now got a good relationship and suddenly  it’s gone how the hell did that happen you think  

I put all these hours into working it out I  thought it was going to work out this time where   the hell’s it gone we’re not trained we’re not  skilled CR Tradesmen we’re just you lousy British   untrained useless isn’t it that’s why we need all  these Polish people coming here to put our shells

Up the Buddha is the pole of the mind so we find ourselves in a situation where  we have lots of energy lots of plans lots of   enthusiasm but it doesn’t quite work and that’s  often because with the best will in the world  

Our parents teachers and so on have given us  Maps which don’t quite fit with things as they are that the cultural Maps the philosophical  Maps the religious maps that we often inherit   are dogmas or constructs that is to say they are  rich and beautiful Creations they are the fruits  

Of enormous creativity but they they arise and  Blossom like huge summer clouds and they don’t   actually show how things are so we can follow  many different paths which have some value and   open our hearts in some way facilitate the  flow of life but they don’t actually do the  

Business because they tilt out in terms of how  we should be what we could do and that gesture   is always a movement away from ourselves so I  am going to become more Myself by doing more   things the logic of that is I am a construct  and the constructed or fabricated nature of  

Myself can be improved it’s basically a  materialistic notion as if we were a Lego   set and we just needed to get a few more bits  from Dad for Christmas and then we could make   a more Fantastical model of ourselves and then  we’d be at home we’d be comfortable but perhaps  

It’s not like that perhaps we are not things  and if we’re not things then doing more things   won’t make us closer to ourselves so from the  point of view ofen the most important thing is relaxation doing less that doesn’t mean that  activity shouldn’t continue activity happens all  

The time we breathe in and out our bodies move we  hear sounds activity flows by itself the problem   is that we in our ego business think we are  adding value by adding ourselves actually we add  

Deoration to the immediacy of the Moment by making  it over Complicated by thinking I have to do this   about that if we just relax do less we will find  that we respond into the situation responses arise  

Out of openness without planning you can know what  to do you know if there are little children around   adult when they get anxious often think well what  what will I do with them well all you need to do  

Is of sit down at the level of the child and say  hi what do you want to do and they’ll tell you   and then you do what they want to do you know you  don’t have to think about playing with children  

With most things in life participation  will show you the way so expert planning preparing creating structures in in advance of the  situation acts as a violence onto the immediacy   of our capacity to respond so that instead of  trusting that what we need will be to hand that  

We will arise fresh into the moment we start with  an anxiety I will be judged if I get this wrong   therefore it behoves me to practice well and get  it right therefore preparation is the basis of  

Security but what am I preparing for this event  which is coming now the event hasn’t yet come so   you don’t know what it is so your preparation  is entirely a mental fabrication based on your   projections about how the situation will be  so you arrive fully formed and then you have  

To deform yourself to fit the actual situation  how many people want to deform themselves no   so we often then insist which brings about the  conflict of the situation you know the the main   thing if you do uh business consultancy the most  important thing in any kind of consultancy is to  

Work out who in the organization is inviting you  in because organizations always have internal   politics and whoever is inviting you will have an  agenda which is probably not shared with the rest   of the organization it’s only by being able  to read the complex field of organizational  

Politics that you can start to sit situate  yourself in a position which is no position   within the organization and only then can you  have a fresh gaze that will illuminate what’s   going on the Dynamics of subject object dualistic  interaction is that other people will always try  

To place us in a place that is familiar to them  we always want to be the the object of Desire   of the other so we try to work out what is the  desire of the other and turn ourselves into that

Object Freedom begins when we realize I am  not an object to be shaped according to Zen   our nature is three-fold the openness  of awareness and its ungraspable ility   the ceaseless richness of the pluralistic multi  endless array of creativity of the Mind thoughts  

Feeling Sensations ceaselessly flowing in a  endless Majestic stream and from that from   the openness and the richness Our Moment by  moment participation into a world with others   which is always exactly this or that and not  another as soon as we are in contact as soon  

As we are present with others it’s always  precise it can’t be a mess each moment of a   mess a messy situation an argument a confusion  is exactly precise it is this it is that it is   that because time is serial on the level of  participation on the level of openness there  

Is no time and on the level of richness this  middle area sometimes called Sakaya time is   everything there present in the same moment  so different modalities of time co-present themselves but to return to the notion of loong we  find ourselves in our ordinary examination in the  

Sort of audit we can do of ourselves as lacking in  certain factors we might think we lack courage or   compassion we lack endurance we find ourselves  being rather selfish we find that the thoughts   that arise for us are self-referential perhaps  persecutory and we want to be alleviated from  

This the Buddha taught many different methods  for doing this but what is really important is   to recognize the difference between meditation  practices which are about integration with the   natural given condition and methods of practice  which are for developing the capacity to move  

Along a path in general the Buddhist teachings are  divided into two main groupings one is called the   vehicles of the cause that is to say these are  methods of study reflection and practice which   generate the causes of being able to awaken  or become enlightened at a future time this  

Includes practices like Lo or mind training  the second are called vehicles of the result   which are Vehicles which bring us into a state in  which we practice with the result already present   in the method of Tantra that is the practice of  as if we act as if we are living in a mandala  

Of deities we act as if we are Divine beings and  that all the beings we encounter are Divine and   through that as ifess through that imaginational  intentionality we transform the sphere in which   we operate in the practice of Zain we directly  integrate into the ground nature and we practice  

With the absolute openness of trusting that now  whatever is arising is arising from the ground   so these are two very different practices one  says the door to Paradise is already open and   you have stepped through you don’t even  need to move you’re already there and the  

Other is saying it’s a long way of Courage  Pilgrim and here’s something for your rock sack so we are now going to look a  little bit at Rock saac territory   loong says the main thing that keeps  us far from our goal from where we  

Want to get to is our obsession with  ourselves self- protection and self aishman feeling that we are more  important than other people we put   ourselves first of course we often don’t do that   in a sort of grand narcissistic manner  but just in a simple manner what do we

Need shall I get first so if you’re in  the supermarket and you’re looking to the   checkout and there’s various people queuing up  and you’ve got your trolley full of stuff and   someone’s coming with three items in their  hand should you let them go first well I  

Was here first I’m already waiting for these  other people yeah but they’ve only got three things how will you work that out should you  sacrifice your 2 seconds for their or should   you insist on the letter of the law God bless  the Pharisees how shall one proceed it’s a big  

Question so all the time if you’re an ethical  person you find yourself tortured and spinning   on these points what shall I do I want to be  useful but there’s a cost do I want to pay the  

Cost in order to kind of free ourselves from this  turning and turning and turning uh that we have   the teaching of Tong in Buddhism Tong means to  give we give to all other beings everything which  

Is beneficial and good and Lena to take we take  onto ourselves All the Troubles and all the misery   of all beings so we don’t need to ever worry about  what we’re going to do we’re taking the shit what  

Do you want shit what are you giving gold I said  simple then it’s very simple the the function of   these practices is to try to remove the anxiety  and the interminable movement of how shall I   behave what shall I do these kind of practices  are a kind of military discipline for the mind  

Because the endless wavering and slavering around  of thoughts and feelings and maybe and yes and no   in this ambivalence is hopeless ambivalence like  a double charge this way and that way this is the   absolute energy of dualism and dualism from the  point of view of Buddhism is the enemy because  

There is no real separation between subject and  object so if you’re uncertain about what to do   you’re shifting one on the other it’s like these  little um hand powered tor watches you have to   keep squeezing them and then the light comes on  and that pulsation like the the pulsation of the  

Heart you know keeps the the light going Keeps  Us Alive in the same way the life of samsara   is exactly the pulsation of yes no good bad it’s a  kind of structuralist binary oppositional World in   which the tension between these polarities creates  an ongoing charge discharge charge discharge I’m  

Good I’m bad I’d like to I better not I want to  oh but why that sweing back and forth every time   you rock there’s a kind of exchange of energy  which keeps the whole of samsara going so you  

Can see hopefully that there are two different  methods here the first method we described this   morning is about integrating into space in which  the you leave the centrality of the the the main   domain of motility of movement of Engagement  and you rest into spaciousness seeing that all  

Movement arises from space and in the second  kind of Dharma path you engage with movement   but with a definite intention so instead of  being uncertain what to do you bring to the   situation the certainty of your commitment  with a Dharma path I will take the bodh V I  

Make myself available for others so whenever I  enter a difficult situation I will know what to   do because I am prefigured I am tilted already  in a particular direction I will be of help to  

Others and as we started to Luke yesterday I  will be of help to others not on the basis of   their external qualities not helping people  because they deserve it but I will help them   because I have decided to help them therefore  there is nothing to think about in my helping

Them now Gordon Brown our soon to be king of  the world is a great believer in means testing   he has the means spirited Scottish Protestant view  that I grew up with and learned to despise always   sniffing around in people’s underwear to find out  what they’re doing this is the spirit of Calvin  

You know who has the Glorious honor of being  the person who reintroduced torture and murder   after the Protestant Revolution the thing that was  anathema to Luther was reintroduced by Calvin and   it is the investigation of people when Calvin ran  Geneva he ran it as a police state he had people  

Going around the streets at night listening  at the doors to see if people were playing   music and then Bang Bang Bang the door would be  broken open and people would be dragged off and   thrown into prison for enjoying themselves  this is Gordon Brown’s vision of [Music]

Britain truly Dreadful everything will have to be  known everything will have to be revealed not for   its own sake not for the pleasure of speculation  but in order to be weighed and called to account   but of course you can’t weigh the human soul human  beings are Beyond arithmetic human beings are this  

Mystery of ceaseless Revelation and so as soon as  you start judging and measuring and weighing you   miss the whole thing you’ve entered into a bloody  objectif ation a mistaking of the very meaning of   existence and of course we have these Gordon  brands in our head all of us will have a judge  

Somewhere that weighs us up that hates ourselves  that thinks we we screw up that worries that   our life isn’t going right that would like to be  better but doesn’t know how and that grinding and   grinding is terribly dangerous because it uses  up a lot of energy it misconstrues reality as  

It is and it creates a an emotional charge which  operates in our belly and fills up all the energy   channels of the body floods the frontal loes of  the brain with obnoxious chemicals that keep us   in hyperarousal and makes us terribly wary of  ourselves and others we don’t trust ourselves  

And we don’t trust other people so the the the  body sight for practice is to get away from that   it’s as it says in the Bible cast your bread upon  the waters just launch yourself into life and see  

What happens don’t count turn off the meter stop  judging yourself stop weighing yourself and just   think I’m for the other that’s what I’m for decide  that when you wake up in the morning decide that  

When you go to sleep at night when you walk down  the street every person you meet you can greet   them in your heart or with your voice welcome  welcome I’m for you I’m for you I’m for the  

Rich person which means I don’t envy them I’m for  the poor person which means I don’t pity them what   is it about these people that we’re for it’s for  their Awakening that is to say our belief and our  

Joy for others is not that they have long happy  lives they can have that as well but in a sense   that’s just the dross that’s not the real thing  that’s not the icing on the cap that’s the dross  

The real thing is that people should be fresh they  should be in their eyes in their senses alive and connected what is it that causes us to glaze over  it’s preoccupation it’s sinking into anxiety the   foreclosures of memory traces worrying about about  the past being anxious about the future which tear  

Us out of the fullness of our presents towards  mental Realms we’re rolling around as if we’re   in a science fiction movie so the practice  of tonin that says basically I give all my   happiness to others I take all their pain and  suffering is a very very present activity all  

Their suffering is coming towards me what am I  going to do with it where am I going to keep it   if you said okay this is a very nice Buddhist  center I think we should have a kind of uh fed  

To raise some money for it we’re going to see if  people have got any old clothes and stuff that   they would like to bring and then we’re going  to have a little market in here if you were  

Lucky people would send lots and lots of stuff the  might send mountains of stuff but then you’ve got   to have a space to deal with this stuff where you  going to put it in the similar way if you invite  

Everyone to give you all their sorrow all their  misery all their suffering where you going to put it if you took a whole load of junk for your  uh flea market you have to have a hole well  

We’ve got a hole that’s fine but is your  ego big enough to hold the suffering of all   beings is your heart big enough you need  an extension luckily we have some Polish   Builders so we are going to build out more  and more rooms so that we can accommodate  

The suffering of all sentient beings how  do we get such a big room in our heart emptiness wisdom and compassion have to go  together the road to hell is paved with good   intentions there’s no point in saying  I want to help all sentient beings but  

Unfortunately no vacancies you know I’m  already a bit too busy I’d like to but   you can’t do the butt once you say I will  it has to be without butts without commas   without any punctuation I’m for you which  means first of all we have to work out who  

Is this eye that is making the grand gesture  because a small eye making grand gestures is   just another term for Tony Blair there is a  political agenda to all of this I come here   to free myself from my political bileet you’re  doing a marvelous job for me I feel much lighter

Already so how do we make our heart bigger it’s  a real question whenever we Define ourselves   whenever we know ourselves to be this or that  when we know our capacity oh I couldn’t do that  

Oh oh I don’t like that I don’t oh I couldn’t  give a talk in public I get so anxious these freezingspectre tell us that we know who we are  therefore they protect us from the adventure of  

Finding out who we are they act as a dull safety  like a kind of alcoholic Haze because in it we   can’t see that actually there is more to me  than meets the eye but I don’t want my eye to  

Meet the more I want to turn my gaze away from my  potential because otherwise I’d be wrenched out of   the Arena of comfort not necessarily A positive  Comfort because our anxiety is also comforting   but the the comfort of the familiar the known  as if it was a true definition so the beginning  

Of developing wisdom is to start to inquire to  put things into question which means in a sort   of phenomenological style we have to bracket  off we have to place on one side our familiar   definition all that we know about ourselves we  have to suspend place that in abeyance so that  

It is not insisting and determining the arena in  front of us so whenever we find ourselves saying   I can’t do this or I always do that we want to  catch that and think oh that’s a wall I’ve just  

Put up a wall take down that wall no planning  permission the court of bodis satas doesn’t   allow these constructions anymore we want wide  open territory so observe how you limit yourself   that’s the most important thing it’s a kind  of contemplation or reflective meditation  

And you can do it all day long you can keep a  little diary in your bag and whenever you find   yourself limiting yourself you write it down  I have to sometimes these things will come in  

A cognitive form like a a series of words and  sometimes they come in the in an impulse from   the body like you suddenly find yourself wanting  to eat something or open a bottle of wine or go  

To sleep or phone a friend or send an email  in that moment something is closing down you   find yourself driven by something that you’re  encapsulated in something narrow without trying   to resist that observe its function the openness  of a minute before has now been lost and you’re  

Encapsulated inside a particular positioning just  observe what then happens how does it affect the   posture of your body your breathing your gaze  your availability for connection with the environment and then we start to see oh yes  Moment by moment through the course of the  

Day I I am limiting my existence that’s what  I do all the time and therefore when I meet   the world I meet it from a very small place this  is tragic this is absolutely tragic when I look   inside to find my mind I don’t find anything  solid because every definition that I give  

About my mind vanishes as soon as it arises I am  lazy I am slow I am stupid I’m too quick I can’t   do this each of these things that seems to come  up and be so true so real so rolent in meaning  

Is then gone if it was real why is it gone it’s  just gone the endless intoxication with these   beliefs as they arise and pulse keeps us on this  journey across a long long river each one of these  

Thoughts is like a stepping stone we’re always  treading on these ideas as if these ideas were   defining the true nature of the situation but  each is ephemeral how can an ephemeral moment   be telling us the true and enduring truth about  ourselves not possible that’s the lie so once we  

Start to see I lie to myself all the time time I  cheat Myself by believing that the impermanent is permanent we can start to relax that’s what I’m  doing I don’t need to do that because it is a  

Doing if you don’t do a doing it will be okay  things stop when you stop doing them you don’t   have to do anything to to stop them you just  have to not do them not doing is not energetic  

It doesn’t do any damage to you it won’t drain  you it won’t exhaust you you just stop doing it   of course there’s the impulse is there these  thoughts these Nexes these nodal points of   condensed meaning and habit are enormously  tempting they’re like Paths of velcro they  

Seem to just lock you on they’re like a kind of  super glue but what is that glue that’s what we   have to look at why is this idea which I can  see is ridiculous why is it so tempting to me  

That’s where we really encounter the raw face  of attachment as the Buddha says in many many   texts attachment is the root cause of suffering  attachment arises from ignorance and attachment   binds us into painful situations why do people  contain negative views about themselves so many  

People have thoughts of hating themselves feeling  that they’re inadequate why would you want to have that that’s a really important  question you have to look for   yourself what is the function  of keeping this stuff is it sentimental is it

Sentimental do we really see the thing as it is  you know you can do that just you going into a   big shop look at all the stuff they’re trying  to sell would you want to buy it no look in an  

Antique shop you think somebody’s owned this crap  I wouldn’t want it in my house other people like   stuff that we don’t like and we like stuff that  other people don’t like this is a really Central  

Thing to realize I make choices that is say I  put my life my energy my libido my associations   into this object and that’s what makes it shine  it’s not shining of itself I am the Shiner of  

The Shining object the light of the object is the  light of the mind no object is shining in and of itself that’s an amazing thing to see because  if we see that then we realize that we are   being cheated by our own Brilliance huh we’re  not being cheated because we’re daed or stupid  

But it is the very light of our mind our own  creativity the wonderful energy that can make   anything shine we delude ourselves by believing  now the shine is out there it’s in the other but  

It is we who do that so as soon as you recognize  oh I’m the shiny one everything just becomes a   little more transparent a little more translucent  and you start to see that the light of your mind   is passing through phenomena that the world is  made of these shimmering Crystal objects and as  

Your light passes through them they glow and then  not they glow and then not how wonderful and then   you look at yourself and it’s the same thing all  that you are all that you take yourself to be is  

Glowing because of how you position your light  in relation to it if you focus your light on   your faults and your limitations that’s what  will glow for you if you focus your light on   your good qualities that’s what will blow for  you neither are real your good qualities are  

Good and yet empty devoid of inherent self nature  and your bad qualities are real or presenting but   without an inherent reality and what gives them  their energy is the light of your own mind when  

You do start to do that you see that the Mind  itself which is open and empty is effulgent the   radiance of the world is the radiance of the  Mind the the world is a mental phenomena the  

More we are centered in ourselves and connected up  doubt the whole world starts to shine for us and   then we’re never bored boredom is not an option  but we’re also not so excited everything has the   same taste you still have discrimination it’s  not put through a blender it’s not homogenized  

Everything is just as it is but we don’t get so  manck or so depressed because what is the nature   of phenomena radiant translucence light shining  empty forms these paintings that we see of these   Gods the images that are presented make them  look a bit solid and substantial but actually  

Uh the descriptions are that they are shimmering  and transparent so that when we visualize these   deities we imagine them made out of gossamer or  glass so they have the the form the shape and the   coloration but you can see right through them  they have no solidity inside them and when we  

Do tantric practice and we visualize the deity  in front of us we imagine rays of light coming   from the deity merging into us and our body  becoming made of light and then rays of light  

Going out from our body to all beings and in that  way we start to see that the whole world is the   shimmering surface of light this is the lived  experience of emptiness everything is there   just as it is it doesn’t suddenly vanish and  yet you see for the first time that it’s light  

Moving Dynamic and not solid and clumping  so you’re no longer bashing into the world   but in this wonderful directly spontaneously  unchoreographed integrated movement from that   there is spaciousness everywhere and that’s the  ground spaciousness through which you can say I  

Take on the sufferings of all beings because now  your house is very big if your house is very small   the danger is you end up with a a grinding dutiful  hardworking paced kind of culture we already have  

Enough of that you know my teacher always said to  me make it as easy as possible do it the quick way   very helpful it doesn’t have to be hard we have  an notion that work is laborious just think of  

That laborious oh my God it’s burden full and you  become inur to it you knuckle down you just get   on with it you put up with it you th it there’s a  sense of trudging but actually work is simply the  

Flow of energy since energy is always flowing  and we are always flowing the essence of work   is to almost like finding the lay line of it to  get in the movement of it and then you’re carried  

By the flow of the energy of the world work is  difficult when we can’t find the Rhythm so the   purpose of all the wisdom teachings in Buddhism  the teachings focused on emptiness is to loosen   the heaviness the concretizing function  of our mind so that we become light and  

Delicate and can start to feel the possibilities  of movement from that compassion rings out because   compassion is the capacity to be with people  and to reach them and make a connection with   them in as many ways as possible according to the  situation so we have a we cup of tea and then do

Some okay uh um so I’ll say a little bit more about  emptiness because I think it’s a very   um important idea um in many ways it is very  similar to the project of deconstruction which   has been a a powerful force in uh modern  intellectual life deconstruction sets out  

The idea that uh what we encounter in life  are actually constructs cultural constructs   historically developed constructs and so on and  our tendency is to take these constructs for granted when we experience the full force of the  constructs in the world around us we often feel  

Imprisoned by them and therefore what we seek  to do is to push them away or to destroy them   so that construction gets met by destruction and  so the kind of modernist movement of destroying   the past mun’s obliteration of many aspects  of Chinese culture the cutting out of many  

Of the inner city areas and putting up  highrise Flats visions of a new future   uh a lot of the idea is that in order to  move forward you have to clear away the past and one can certainly have that  as a psychological function as well  

You can feel that you have to get rid  of what’s happened to you you have to   clear things out as if our existence  was some uh Loft that was full of old   junk but the idea of deconstruction is very  different it’s that we should uh put things  

Into question that we should um deny  the totalizing validic of the notion that the sum of the parts that that comes  together and creates this mystical extra   element so that the whole is greater than the sum  of the parts all construct are made up of Parts  

Things brought together juxtaposed organized in  a way that we can see up to a certain point and   then suddenly this magical thing happens that it  all settles into place and it seems to be just   the thing itself for example if you’re playing  with a child and doing a crossword puzzle you’ve  

Got all the different bits and pieces and you put  them together and when when they’re all in place   suddenly there is that picture and the picture  appears to LEAP out a fully formed GTO a thing  

Which is just itself and in that seeming givenness  of it it resists the actual knowledge that we have   that it’s built up of pieces does that make sense  and that is that’s the point of ignorance because   this add-on appears as we were looking earlier  about how the light is coming from the light  

Of the Mind Illuminating the object the givenness  of the object is a quality of the mind not of the   object yeah we ourselves seal these contingent  moments into something which appears to be   just that of course impermanence moves the thing  shifts it unravels it on furls and it’s something  

Else but while it was that thing it appears to be  that thing for example here we are in this Buddha Center a while ago this was a very different  sort of building then Builders came in it’s  

Painted and now it’s taken on a life of its  own it appears to be something so every time   you come here you come to kandolin you come to  this Buddhist center the fact that this building  

Has been used for other purposes in the past is  swept away it’s as if it has never been anything   other than what it is and yet it is only this  because of factors because somebody’s paying   the rent because various people contribute to the  upkeep of the building because nobody’s broken in  

And spoiled it and so on and so on and so on  there are many Factor fa s that hover around   factors of Maintenance which need to be applied  factors of Destruction or change which need to be   held in abeyance and the dynamic between these  two allows the continuity of this environment  

And yet we can take it for granted as if it  was here just by itself and of course that’s   why you know when we have an event like this one  we always need to remember with gratitude uh the  

Work of all the people who keep Center like this  going because it doesn’t just happen by itself   but it’s very interesting I think that if you  work in any voluntary organization you have the   experience of being taken for granted because  actually what people want is to believe that  

Things are just there by themselves to recognize  that things are a construct brings a slight edge   of hesitation well if people didn’t help then it  wouldn’t happen happen but I want it to happen so   I’ll just pretend it happens by itself it’s just  there and that’s one of the reasons why children  

Are are often not very grateful to their parents  especially to their mom it’s very important for   children to take their mom for granted because if  they realized that mom was doing these things for   them at some sacrifice to themselves that Mom  was actually making choices choices involving  

Self-abnegation to favor the child to put them  first the child would feel burdened with a huge   responsibility which of course in the good  teaching from Moses they damn well ought to have but it’s not very popular nowadays so somehow this the sense of giveness  is very important now one of the uh typographical  

Uh conventions that was attempted in the early  period of um deconstructive writing was the idea   of putting a bar or a line through a word  so that the word would be printed but the  

Line through it would act as a kind of Erasure a  rubbing away a a a dissolving of the full impact   of the intoxication of taking the word at full  value so you might have god with a line through  

It and the line reminds us that God acts the word  the term this the sign is acting as a kind of uh   attractor of values of meanings the free floating  signifies of our existence get pulled into terms  

Like God love death and these terms can then have  multiple functions for many different people all   of which seem intensely real and it’s exactly  in these moments that we forget we are putting   our value into that world that word is being  pumped up shaped adapted by us while we believe  

That the meaning is being revealed to us from the  word does that make sense that’s exactly where we   can see how emptiness how the openness of the term  it’s natural indeterminacy is covered over by our  

Mistaken belief that the word is the truth that  the word is what it is so people say I love you   what does that word love mean mean clearly endless  things and mean if you’re in a relationship with  

Someone through time that word can mean many  many things can mean I desire you I want you   please don’t leave me you should do what I say I  mean endless numbers of movements and by the very  

Indeterminacy of the word it becomes a flexible  link a bit like in a pontoon bridge where the the   barrels that are tied together can move up and  down and the bridge can adapt to the flow of the

River what we what what we do when we deconstruct  something is to see that it exists as a   fabrication we don’t need to take it apart we  don’t need to stop using it but we do need to  

Remind ourselves to call ourselves again and again  to the fact of its fabrication and the fact that   it hasn’t been fabricated in a factory somewhere  else but that we are c-abc with the potentiality  

Of the sign that is to say that we are writing or  inscribing the World As We encounter it does that   make sense and that if we don’t put ourselves  into the world the world will be other than our

World which which is you know in the work that  I do with couples one of the big problems uh we   often find is that couples don’t have any the  couples that certainly comfor therapy don’t   have a uh they haven’t evolved uh a method of  making we decisions very often each party makes  

An individual decision so they live together maybe  for many many years maybe fully married with kids   and all the rest of it but essentially they’re  living two individuals and they have a delegation   of tasks and that sets up a sort of pattern of  parallel life so one party organizes the holidays  

So Tom says to Mary well I’ve booked her holiday  Mary says okay she says okay when she’s in love   with Tom but when she starts to get pissed off  with Tom she says what you didn’t ask me I don’t  

Want to go there and so the quarrel start and  they they’ve no idea actually how to make a we   decision because we begins when both individuals  I and I can put this bar through themselves can   put themselves into question and say what I know  about myself the trajectory of my desire is not  

Something I can pursue in relation to the task or  the project of being with this other that is to   say I for I me for me is different from the me for  you and the me for you is a different me therefore  

The me for me cannot decide what can only be done  by the me for you and if we if you can’t inhabit   a me for you you can’t make an us does that make  sense and when it’s to me for me there’s just end  

This clashing and you get the power of politics  of who’s going to dominate and control but to   be mean for you means you have to exist in me as I  form myself towards you you are the addressy of my   intentionality here and therefore I must prepare  my intentionality for you you’re a vegetarian  

I like steak I will cook vegetables for you the  fact that I like steak has nothing to do with me   cooking for you because you’re a vegetarian but I  like steak why am I cooking vegetables when I like  

Steak but you’re a veget and and that’s the that’s  the tension always between these positions and of   course it can become a very helpful tension  because it moves both ways to deconstruct or   to open up the gestures because if you only tilt  towards the other with a self abnegation you can  

Empty out yourself into a place of abasement and  lostness you can become the the Hopeless slave the   slave who finds themselves in the other but never  is returned to themselves by that gesture so we   need to be for ourselves and for the other that’s  why when we do meditations like metab bavana  

Developing love and kindness we develop it to all  beings including myself not to split subject and object so emptiness is not the rubbing out of the  world but the rubbing out of the illusion of the   inherent self- nature of things inherent self-  nature means that phenomena are self-defining so  

Outside this building there are a row of cars  when we look out we can see yes these are all   cars that is to say car is a generic type it’s  a a group term a term which allows us to subsume  

Certain phenomena it’s an abstraction which gives  us power to name and locate and place phenomena   then when we look at a particular car we say  this is a blue BMW this is a particular kind of

Car what is a blue BMW it is paint and chromium  and seats and all these things we could take each   part out because the car was made by putting  different bits in if the bits were put in  

You can take them back out again now with the new  electronic aspects of cars it’s more difficult to   do that but you could still take all the bits out  and lay them out then you could unpack the bits of  

The bits the seat could be taken down and broken  down and then you could look at the the iron   in the seat and you can break it down into its  molecules then you can break the molecules down  

Into its atoms and we can see that each part of  the car is composed of other phenomena and other   phenomena and you can take this add infinum right  to its infinite extent because it never comes to   an end there’s always something more to be said  in that process of reduction so that extends  

Infinitely and then the infinite when you reverse  it all these infinite extensions come together as   a blue BMW a blue BMW parked here at this moment  in time the blue BMW has not been practicing   Transcendental Meditation has not developed the  power of levitation and so it is parked on the  

Earth in a particular place entities Are Always  Somewhere the context and and the entity are not   two things they are always there together a car  is Always Somewhere a person is always somewhere   that somewhere is not an optional extra since we  do not have the choice to be nowhere the somewhen  

Is part and parcel of our being who we are so the  seeming autonomy of my existence or of the motor   car has to to be barred it has you have to put it  into question because we are always contextualized  

So who we are is always part and parcel of where  we are because we become we Elevate we manifest   we display who we are where we are you can’t be a  person not in a place that’s really important that  

Shows the emptiness of the notion of I am just me  I am just me being me I my Inus is always a we we   are always we we are always multiple because  even internally we are multiple we have our   subpersonalities or self States or moods sometimes  one aspect is coming forward sometimes another  

So the analytical uh aspect of understanding  Emptiness is to again and again inspect the   assumptions that we have about the phenomena we  encounter and to observe how we add this component   which in terms of our relative life seems to add  value meaning and yet in its very revealing of the  

True quality of something it conceals something  else so for example we say there is a blue BMW   that reveals the nature of the car which is  parked outside but the seductive quality of  

That blue BMW because we know what a blue BMW is  the clarity that is given by the term blue BMW the   illumination that it brings simultaneously makes  us stupid because we no longer examine what’s   there it’s a blue BMW so the clarity which comes  from the conceptual identification of phenomena  

Which carries with it the sense that they are  truly existing brings about the hallucination or   Amnesia or hypnogogic induction into a Tak taking  for granted our curiosity vanishes the more that   we know so knowledge makes us stupid knowledge  in that sense is very dangerous knowledge as  

Understanding I am standing under something which  is already established do you understand what I’m   talking about so what are you standing under what  you talked about oh it’s quite an umbrella isn’t   it it’s raining now so when you walk around with  an umbrella you’re not very free the wind blows it  

You got to avoid stabbing people in the eyes with  it when you’re holding something up you’re holding   it up just as an umbrella traps your hand it  protects you and it enslaves you knowing that that  

Is a blue BM double you traps you and enslaves you  in the same way it gives you protection against   not knowing what’s what but that very what’s  whatness means asleep that is the heart of   the the real function of emptiness for us to see  that everything is a construct is conventional is  

Conditioned means not that we should wipe it away  but that we should be playful deconstruction is a   call to play it’s a a play not to take ourselves  too seriously not to arrive at a final solution   there is no final solution because each thing  tilts into another and another and another we  

Live in this endless chaining this endless linking  of signifiers which as they move tilt each other   an image that’s often given for this is indra’s  net which is a net of of uh diamonds or Crystal   forms which covers the whole universe and  each facet of each Jewel reflects all the  

Facets of all the other Jewels so it’s an endless  interweaving of multiple Reflections and that’s   really what our world is that we are endlessly  being called into the aliveness of the bright   shinness of each moment we don’t know what it is  but as we’ve looked earlier we can participate in  

It and participate it from emptiness as emptiness  towards emptiness achieving nothing but emptiness   but that emptiness is vital and Alive radiant  whereas when we rest in the conceptualization and   we know what’s what we sit it’s as if we are the  center of the world and things turn around us like  

Like some spider in a web that’s a very different  kind of net that’s a net that catches things that   traps them that wraps them up and sucks the juice  out of them that’s a very Petty Bourgeois way to  

Exist and that’s one thing that we don’t do  in Mel field Petty Bourgeois is off it’s so P darling what’s it all about I hope you’re going  to have a good lunch so very very important to to  

Observe how power knowledge the will to control  actually cannot give us the goods it is a false   move it’s a mistaking of what our existence  is all about the more we try to secure things   the more we lose but of course the opposite of  that is not destruction it’s not about throwing  

Your life into the winds delinquent teenagers  who just leap into anything they’re not going   anywhere good either so it doesn’t mean that  you have to destroy your life if you have a   very conventional life and you play golf  on Saturday and you’re a member of clubs  

And so on you don’t need to stop doing any of  that you don’t have to grow long hair or shave   your head there is nothing external that has  to be done because we’re not trying to change  

The form of life what we’re trying to do is  to see that each form in life is radiant and   dynamic it’s not something that you can take  for granted taking for granted is to insult   your existence because the other possibility is  to live in Wonder to be amazed Moment by moment  

At colors at sounds to be vibrant and fresh  it’s so amazing is it little black bird in   winter time fantastic it’s just ah so why do we  take things for granted it’s a form of stupidity  

A form of mental dullness in tibetan it’s called  teuk Muk means kind of dark and heavy and te has   also the idea of opacity something impenetrable  and when we know what something is we know no   longer penetrated it’s it’s not translucent it  is just what it is it’s a blue BMW for God’s  

Sake it’s just a car it’s a blue BMW oh okay so  you can’t look at it you can’t look through it   its name announces bugger off you know I am my  logo I Am this thing McDonald’s is good for you  

Don’t inquire Nike are good never never mind the  children that stitch them you know it’s all logos   it’s all the the dogmatic assertion of the name  the abstract concept that says knowledge precedes experience which is again takes us back to that  more San existential move about does Essence  

Precede existence or is existence something which  develops essence but Essences which will always   de Essence themselves I mean he’s rather of course  pre- deconstructive but it’s the same sort of move   because if an Essence if the seeming uh truth  of something is generated out of the dynamic of  

Experience that Essence will always be contingent  that is to say it cannot be taken for granted as   being something in itself because its roots lead  down into the dynamic movement of life so if you   have children these children manifest all sorts  of things you cannot know your children you can  

Be with your children you can play with them you  can engage with them but you cannot know them you   can know about them you can know lots of things  about them but you cannot know them because they  

Will always be showing you new things so that  sense your knowledge is always falling off the   child that’s why the kids come home from school  you say how was it today because you don’t know   they have to tell you that’s why we face out  towards others and we have questions how are  

You what’s the matter are you okay because we  don’t know if we knew then the world would cease   to move so knowledge is a very uh suspect and  false god the knowledge of Concepts emptiness   means loosening up the urge to control and seeing  the dynamic nature of all phenomena and because  

They are dynamic they cannot be known apart  from their context that context can only reveal   itself through participation therefore the path to  Awakening the path to both wisdom and compassion   is to enter into the world as part of the world  and allow the world to reveal itself as you are  

Revealed to yourself through your participation  of the world so emptiness is the freedom to   bracket off to put to one side your assumptions  your foreclosures your imaginations in order to   experience the world and you can practice that  in a very ordinary way as you prepare food you  

Can uh see how things have a particular um moment  in which they are just what you want them to be   if you cook something for too long it’s likely to  start burning on the bottom of the pan and then  

The taste of burnt rice is not like the taste of  unburned rice if something is not cooked enough   it won’t have the flavor of a cooked thing so if  you have something like a potato or a cette and  

It’s not quite cooked it is still a potato and a  kette but when you put it in your mouth you think   it doesn’t taste like a potato well the taste of  the potato is the taste of the CED potato because  

That’s what we eat rabbits and other animals are  quite happy to have raw potatoes so the taste of   the potato for the rabbit is different than  for us that is to say a potato exists inside   the biological and social cultural determinism  of me wanting to have a cooked potato the LIF  

Span of the potato means that although I see it  on the supermarket shelf and I buy it as a potato   I don’t want to take it out of the bag and eat  it I want to take it home and cook it h so it’s  

Still a potato but its potat is only revealed to  me through my participation with boiling water or   fat or putting it in the oven and that’s the same  with everything isn’t it you have to cook things  

To make them tasty so we cook the world through  engaging with it we bring the warmth of our heart   and in that oven Life Starts to smell a little  sweet so and analysis here doesn’t mean something  

Cold and distant it’s not some positivistic study  of things which are out there and looking with a   neutral gaze it’s rather an engagement which is  alive and questioning what is this who Am I who  

Am I is an invitation to find yourself who am I  is a question that can never be asked answered   but is always being answered it can never be  answered because we are open we are nothing as  

Such it can always be answered because we are  whoever we are at the moment that we ask the   question that’s the double move so emptiness  or openness the ungraspable of the world and   the performativity of our existence Moment by  moment which is a gesture of communication is  

The unification of wisdom and compassion so you  can do that look at everything in your house look   at carpets look at clothes look at children’s  homework look at everything you encounter and   see how it is constructed it’s something put  together and start to observe the function of  

Language in your existence language is something  Exquisite it’s a very beautiful thing it can bring   us so much pleasure but it is a game language  speaks to language language hovers like some   mesmerizing Archangel in the world with glistening  wings and little rainbows falling from them words  

And things exist in a very complex and strange  relationship people like wienstein would say   language has nothing to do with the World Language  only speaks to language the world is and that’s   quite a good place to start so when you look at  something like a watch we can see this object  

And we can all say yes this is a watch watch is  a name that we put onto this what is the watch of   the watch is there anything watchy in the watch  if this watch had a voice would it call itself a  

Watch or is this voice is this watch a victim of  prejudice for too long watches have been called watches where this we are now opening the  splotch Liberation fund all watches shall be   renamed because the watch has announced itself  a splotch it’s because human ears can’t quite  

Understand watchy language it this is it we don’t  see that we label the world there is no nothing   about this that says watch and of course if you  speak another language it won’t be watch in that  

Language it won’t be called watch in Polish or  French or German it’s called watch in English so   living inside a community a linguistic Community  where there is a shared use of signifiers we come  

To call this a watch and it appears to be a watch  in itself we look at it and the watch seems to be   in the watch the watch is what we put on to  this thing what is this thing which we call a

Watch something we see we can lick it and taste  it we can rub it on ourselves we can have an   engagement with it what does it taste like it’s a  bit because of dry and cold and some of my sweats  

On the back of it too so interesting taste I  am describing in language something about this   or this I’m telling you about my sensation in  Licking this and I say it tastes like where’s   the taste on the watch or in my mouth this  is what we do all the time projecting onto  

Phenomena attributes which are the radiance and  creativity of ourselves our mind is just like   this magnificent choreographer this wonderful  shaherazad we’re endlessly telling stories and   weaving dreams across the world and we then  think we’re dumb and stupid because we don’t  

Know very much isn’t that mad this is The Unborn  creativity of the dharmakaya everything that we   see that we experience everything that we say  is the ceaseless flow of energy of life itself   so examining the most mundane phenomena you can  reclaim the Vitality of the world as being an  

Aspect of yourself but this self is not separate  it is part of the world so in as much as you pull   it back to yourself you release it once again  to its status of participant and so the world   becomes a co-emergence of phenomena which  are ungraspable because and the mind which  

Is ungraspable because and between these two  dummies it’s all very bright and shiny pretty   good pretty good so this is the importance of  emptiness and there are many books describing   this which you can study and you know for those  of you who live nearby in mfield you can bring  

These ideas into the study program and keep  looking at them really really important many   of the traditional text on emptiness are a bit  dull and dry you should try not to be put off   by that because what people are trying to do is  to use language to deconstruct or to undermine  

The the Foreclosure of things being what they  appear to be that’s a difficult technical task   if it takes you fancy and I hope it does I would  suggest it’s worth participating in that because   it gives you micro tools the more tools you have  the more situations you can do something with in  

Terms of yourself maybe you don’t need so many  tools you might have a Dharma path of a simple   kind of meditation which feels enough for you but  you are not the limit of your world your world is  

Others and part of our gesture is always to be  with others so what tools do we need in order   to be more fully with others sometimes these  are philosophic iCal tools sometimes they’re   emotional tools there are methodologies or ways  in which golden Pathways along which we can move  

So study intellectual study it’s not the whole  story but it’s a very very useful support some   people say I’m not intellectual or I couldn’t  understand that why not try it’s difficult so   why is difficulty a problem foolish people climb  to the top of Mount Everest for no reason at all  

You know if someone can climb to the top of Mount  Everest you can study theara why not it gives you   a headache what’s a headache what other things  have given you a headache too much alcohol the   Gan or too much alcohol the Gina probably has  a more lasting benefit and won’t damage your  

Liver so study is very important because each  of us has Buddha nature our minds carry this   natural Radiance we should trust that it’s very  sad to make yourself stupid by telling yourself   that you are stupid if you want to know whether  you’re stupid or not leave it up to other people  

Ask other people am I stupid they’ll tell you  it’s unlikely that anybody is going to see that   you’re stupid because usually other people see us  as better than we see ourselves so again don’t let  

Yourself be the limit of your own existence you’re  not a very good judge of your value as soon as we   take refuge in the Dharma we take refuge because  we need protection from the limiting factors of  

Our existence in order to move towards Awakening  and when we take the body at we commit ourselves   to helping others so we need to Resource ourselves  and we say when we take the body sa as long as  

It takes I will continue as many beings as there  are I will liberate them that means we need some   resources getting resources requires time and  effort when people want to climb Mount Everest   they go and get sponsors or these people who  sail alone around the world they get sponsors  

They get the right bat they get the right kind  of food and so on people who go out into space   to go on the moon think how much resourcing people  have for that you want to realize your own nature  

And to liberate all sentient beings you need  to get a few resources takes time and effort   to build these up then we have to think what else  do I use my time for oh well I need some downtime  

I need just to chill I need to relax okay so  why is studying the truth about existence not relaxing why would why would that be  work what is what is our nature work   that we have to apply our energy feels as  if it’s stealing something from us but of  

Course when we apply our energy there is  this delicious movement the mind focused   vibrant clear the body tense and alert  isn’t that gorgeous so how can we avoid that you know there’s so many stories that we  have from the way our culture construes things  

That work is shit so you need to weakend actually  work is gorgeous meaningful work is vibrant the   worst thing in life is to be useless to have no  use for yourself or for others so understanding  

Infamous is very very important and you can pursue  it in a very simple way you have an orange take   the peel off the orange would you like an orange  yes okay eat the whole damn thing no I don’t want  

To eat this skin we want to eat the skin and an  orange but it’s an orange you said you wanted an   orange no I only want that bit of the orange just  in these little moments you can see no do you want  

A Kit Kat yeah okay eat the wrapping no I just  want the chocolate but it says Kit Kat on it you   wanted to Kit Kat you have the wrapping I’ll eat  the chocolate you wanted to Kit Kat doesn’t say  

Kick out on the chocolate in that way just observe  all the time how we construct how we delude ourselves this is the essence really of  loong loong is developing the capacity of   our intelligence to make disc discriminations  and to see how diluted we are there is no shame  

In being diluted being deluded is the beginning  of Awakening when you realize how easily you’re   mesmerized how easily you get LED astray you  start to understand something of the nature of   the mind so that when we do meditation and we  decide I’m going to focus my attention on the  

Breath and then half an hour goes by and you’ve  been everywhere but focused on the breath that’s   very useful if you say to yourself oh I can’t  meditate this is a waste of time that’s not   helpful that’s just old stories that you run on  yourself much more interesting to think oh what  

Is this how come I can’t do a simple task I think  that I am an adult who is competent who can carry   up my life I can go shopping I can park the car  in a small space I can do my tax returns I can do  

All these sorts of things and I can’t keep my  mind focused on my breath what is that that’s   really really interesting observing how I get  lost no blame no shame just curiosity and that   Curiosity itself makes the Mind shine so in that  way your limitations or your mistakes become a  

Path to Awakening so again the key points are  always the same tenderness because tenderness   is very gentle and very close when you’re tender  to something or Tender to yourself you you you’re   very with it if you’ve got a lovely mohare  jumper you might want to wash it by hand and  

You wash you get these nice soap flakes and you  get have to get them all dissolved in the water   so it’s already quite a sensuous experience  and then you plunge the wool in and you feel   the wool absorbing the water and it gets heavy  and then very gently you’re rubbing it and you  

Just feel that gorgeous so in that way if we  are so tender with something made of wool why   would we be tender to ourselves and tender to  other people because when you’re tender you   feel things the quality of the wool is revealed  through the quality of your attention this is the  

Heart of the Dharma that the world we live in is  the world of our own quality what we get is what   we are and we are very fortunate because we meet  here together and we start to understand that we  

Are much much more than we ever thought we were  and getting closer to the Infinity of our being   allows us not to retreat from the world but to  be with the world in a way that lets it reveal  

Its richness okay time goes by if we do some  final sitting with the three R this is a very   simp simple practice you can do it by yourselves  or you can do it here at the center and it’s based  

Again on the principle of relaxation don’t  be busy in your mind just allow yourself a   mere presence just as we say are releasing the  tensions conceptualization out and just resting   with whatever occurs if judgment arise let them  come and pass whatever is arising just allow it  

To rise and go don’t try to block thoughts  or feelings from coming don’t try to push   them on their way don’t try to hang on to them  just allow equal opportunities whatever comes   comes whatever goes goes and we stay open  in that state for some time and come to an end a Ah then we dedicate the Merit of whatever we’ve  done to all sentient beings you can just   imagine out of our hearts rays of rainbow  colored light spreading out to all beings [Applause] 5:14:31.680,1193:02:47.295 [Music] show okay so that brings us to the end thank you very  

Much for inviting me here I’ve  had a good time hope you have too see