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
15 Comments
Thank you for sharing this 😊🙏😊🙏😊🙏
Thank you so much for posting this. So profound!
Appreciate you, James ❤😅
Thank you so much for sharing these videos!
The insights are incredibly useful. However shorter videos would be better!
I would always be happy to volunteer my time to cut them shorter too.
Namaskar
From FL.
The most liberating of all the buddhas teachings is impermanence. And impermanence is not some mystical formulation, it is something that is there in front of your nose 24 hours a day. It is 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 stabilised field of experience
– James Low
James Low, we are not just bopping here!! We came here to get lost in Samsara and find our way back to true nature – liberation. We learn and grow along the way until we realize how to get home without necessarily dying – even though eventually we will die… and maybe we will reach liberation upon death but it could happen before. You kinda make life be meaningless. I love and understand the principles of Buddhist teachings and thought – we are not just bopping… we are looking for happiness… and the buddha gave us a road map for the realization of it.
Mr Low did something with his hands and arms when he spoke.
What does it mint?
It's mint something? 😊
Thanks ❤
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 recognise turbulence is normal. 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 is never calm, its never ever calm. The Tibetan word for this world is jigten, jig means disolving or breaking or changing, something which is transitory and ten means a site, it is a site of impermanence, this world is a site of transition. Now if that is what it actually is to image that it will be stable is an absolute illusion
– James Low
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 am disturbed, you disturb yourself twice as much. The fact is you will be disturbed because disturbance is what you get here
– James Low
So very important in meditation is to let all thoughts go. If you get some brilliant inisght 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 then go. My minds full of shit, ah yeah. It's not my shit. Somebody's shitting in my mind. Sooner or later they'll stop and 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'm in charge of it, I am responsible for it and I am not going to put up with it any longer, then you will be very, very busy
– James Low
Very often we confused intensity with awareness, that things become real because they are intense
– James Low
Tthhaaannxxx!
🙏
It's no easy because if no there are me and others how to help others? Or why?
27:50 4:47:35