Facing The Pandemic With The Support Of The Dharma 15/26

How to deal with uncertainty and fear around us and also within us. How can Dharma teachings support us? How can we deepen understanding and love for life in the midst of chaos ? This series of teachings offers reflections on possibilities available to us, including practices we can engage with, lean into, and cultivate. The following talk adresses the notions of impermanence and reification.

Transcript

Okay,

So this is the beginning of the second part,

We could say,

Of this seminar.

And the subject that we'll explore for this week is of course linked to the others.

They sometimes seem so different and yet they all kind of contribute to the same freedom,

Maybe,

I would say.

Like the idea is to find a more free way to lead our lives,

Somehow.

And so,

The first week with the peace of mind,

Of course,

Is very easy to understand how this is linked to a sense of inner freedom.

And the second week of finding meaning also,

.

.

.

It's very related to peace of mind and the ability to be in Love,

Is also related to peace of mind and sense and directions.

And this time we'll explore mainly a topic that is very well known,

That is called impermanence.

And we will see this through the lens of not solidifying,

Not reifying.

So,

Reifying is a word that I didn't know,

I don't know since long,

So maybe the non-English speakers among us don't know,

So.

.

.

It means to reify something is to make it more real,

Somehow.

I look in the dictionary to be sure,

It means to make something more real.

So,

I would like to start a little bit with some.

.

.

Just two or three quotes that I'm very fond of,

Since some time.

So,

Those of you who sat retreats with me,

Recently you heard these quotes already,

And we're gonna start from there and see where it leads.

And the first one is one of my hero of the moment,

And his name is Niels Bohr.

And so,

He was Nobel Prize in 1922,

I think,

Of physics.

And he says,

Everything we call real is made of things that are not real.

Everything.

So,

That's quite already like.

.

.

I think we should listen very carefully to what he's stating there,

Because he's saying this very publicly as a Nobel Prize scientist.

So,

It's not a light declaration.

He's saying everything we call real are made of things that we cannot call real,

That are not real.

Another quote from one of long time masters,

From myself,

Nisargadatta Maharaj.

He says,

When the mind is totally still,

Totally silent,

There is no world.

When the mind is totally still,

Totally silent,

There is no world.

Quite extreme again.

Now Buddha,

Also a good one.

Perception is like a mirage.

See this mirage in the desert that appears but do not really exist?

Perception is like a mirage and consciousness is like a great magician.

Again,

Quite extreme.

All these statements from quite well-known guys are quite revolutionary.

They go quite against our intuition of what reality is.

And it's pushing us,

It's like,

It's forcing us for those who listen to question again what is real.

I like Jesus always saying after discourse,

He said,

Hear the one who have ears.

You know,

Hear the one who have ears.

So we can hear these things and keep going.

That's usually what we do when it's very so far apart from our daily experience and from our way of viewing life.

But sometime maybe we're hit a little bit.

Like again Nils Bohr said,

The one,

How did he say that?

The one who is not under shock when he hears quantum theory,

Didn't understand it.

You see,

So it's a little bit the same here.

If we're not under shock when we hear these statements,

Then it means we didn't really understand what these guys mean.

And recently I was reading a book from Wolf Singer.

He's a neuroscientist.

So a guy who studies the brain and they move very fast these last years in the evolution in scientific world.

Especially I think neuroscience is like one of the science that moves very fast in these last decades maybe.

So it's hard for us because we're not in that world to update and see where we're at with the last findings.

But now it seems quite accepted in the neuroscientist approach that the brain is what makes reality appear the way it appears.

Yeah,

Which before was more the world of spirituality that was saying,

Like that the way of looking impacts on what we see for instance.

And that there was a process of creating the creation.

It was more like kind of a mystical discourse.

But now it's neuroscience who says like we inherit as human,

Like all species have their way of seeing that they inherit through the genes.

That's the common theory right now in neuroscience is that the shapes and colors and everything perceived,

We see it like this not because it is like this,

But because we have learned prior to our birth because it's in the genes.

We have developed this way of interpreting the waves that comes to our senses.

So it's waves that come to our senses and then the brain makes sense and forms something with these perceived waves.

I find this quite exciting personally.

And I sense that there's a possibility of understanding,

Like opening up curiosity and a fresh look at how things appear.

And maybe a way of seeing,

Opening a way of seeing that doesn't solidify so much what we see.

So of course there's a question because here we're quite at some depth of realization and exploration.

I'm opening this talk with something and you should check what is the inner response with this.

Yeah,

But I'm opening this talk with something that is not of easy access.

It's not a very easy talk that can be broadcast somehow.

It's kind of directly going very deep in the exploration of the Dharma.

So how do we go and why?

How do we hold these questions dearly and what do we do with them?

So that's part of this week,

That's part of this week of the seminar.

And I think it would be foolish to believe anything of this.

Foolish because it's not because big,

Some big guys said that it's true first.

And even if it's true,

What change would it make to our experience of life if we believe it's true?

It wouldn't make much more difference,

No?

We change from one belief to the other and not much changes.

So I think we have to find our way to explore and questioning and observing in our experience.

So I see there are many entries in the Dharma,

In the approach of the Dharma and any tradition,

There are so many,

But there are many entries in the Dharma for exploring this lack of substantiality,

I won't be able to say it.

So I'll keep with solidity and like of the objects of experience.

And one is in meditation,

I'm going to speak about meditation.

In meditation,

And this is what we're going to do,

We are going to look for holes in our experience.

Holes means,

For instance,

I'll take an example from the French group that I just had before.

Someone said she has a.

.

.

A coven,

Yeah the ear,

Sound,

Continuous sound.

And she said like for her,

A coven is for all life,

She has a coven,

That's how it is.

Yeah?

All the time it's there.

And in this session,

She actually noticed that there are moments where she don't hear it.

So then it puts the question,

She doesn't hear it maybe because she's immersed into something else.

You know,

Like a child immersed in a book doesn't hear that you call his name.

Yeah?

So she doesn't hear the coven,

Maybe because she's immersed in something else.

Maybe because she's immersed in something else.

Or it can be like immersed into something else or the mind becomes so quiet that there is no,

And that's something that I would challenge you a little bit to verify in meditation,

That sometimes the mind becomes so quiet that there is no perceiving of what's going on around,

Which is another,

It's something else than the regular mindfulness we usually practice.

Anyway,

What she realized is that this idea that it's always there brings attention in how she feels her future.

Imagine if you have this and you hold this idea that it's going to be for all your life always there.

It's kind of depressing.

It affects your happiness of life when you have this idea.

But this is a reification.

This is solidifying something that is not true.

It's not always there.

You see,

In her experience,

She noticed that there are moments where it's not there.

So this is holes.

There are holes in our experience.

For instance,

If you have a pain,

Which happens very much in meditation,

So we can explore this,

You have a knee pain,

You have a back pain or something like this,

Neck.

So we can look into the pain.

We have a sense that this pain is there since 10 minutes and it's not moving and it's not going away and it's not changing.

But if we're willing to explore with more precision our experience,

We can first see that the pain is not linear,

It moves.

There are ups and downs.

And there are maybe moments where we can't feel it.

There are holes again in our experience of pain.

The mind will say it's been always there or it's like,

Since two days I have a headache.

If we look with deep precision in our experience,

It's not since today that we have headaches.

We have coming and going headaches,

But there are moments where it's not there.

For this,

It needs to go deep enough into the moment to moment experience.

This Sargadatta Maharaj again says like the,

Our every,

Any experience is full of holes like a net,

A fishing net.

And it is the memory that puts all the dots together and to make a sense of continuity.

But there is no continuity.

It's always broken up all experiences.

A little bit like the image that comes to my mind now is like animations where you have image flashing so fast that you see a movement and then you believe this is a movement,

But it's actually image after image for instance.

So that's one of the great thing with meditation is we learn to explore a bigger range of experience and in more with more precision than in daily life.

If we don't have this intention and this kind of practice.

So we may realize that anything that is that we would say this is good has some downside like in like for instance in pain,

There may be moments of no pain and there may be moments of pleasure in pain.

Sometimes that may be shocking to hear,

But if we look deep enough,

There may be moments where it contains its opposite.

Maybe that's a little bit around the symbolic of yin and yang.

Maybe it can't,

There are moments where it contains its opposite.

And the same with pleasure.

There's not continuous non-moving,

Stable,

Solid pleasure all the time for that amount of time.

It's mixed and moving all the time.

It doesn't have that solidity that the mind tends to give.

And that when the mind gives solidity,

Often it creates attachment in one way or suffering.

That's why we have to look into that.

And this what I'm saying now,

It's a difficult discourse for me because it is so vast what it implies because we have to look in every direction.

Mind states,

Emotions,

Relations,

All our ideas or feelings,

Everything we can look in and see if it changes the way we relate to everything in our daily life.

For instance,

We actually solidifying,

Reifying is needed.

It is needed that we construct,

Because it's a construct,

It's a mind construct that makes a kind of an image,

A fixed image of something that is always moving.

And we need this fixed image to relate to somehow.

And one good example of that is the construction of the ego.

That ego in the term of Western psychology is not as bad as in Eastern.

It's the ego in Western psychology.

It's a little bit mixed with personality in my understanding.

Not sure,

But that's the way I understand it.

Yeah.

So we kind of need,

We need in Western psychology to construct over time an idea of ourselves and a way,

An idea,

An image of ourselves that is positive and strong enough and resilient enough.

And then we go through life in a healthy way.

We have this image of ourselves that we use to relate with others.

In this image,

There are all aspects of our personality and our work and what we've done before and everything.

We accumulate this in a kind of a self sense.

And if we can build an image like this,

That is,

That functions well,

Then it will,

We will be able to work in this life with more ease.

So this is very important to construct this image.

But then I think it becomes a problem if we kind of relate to ourselves as if we were that set of informations about ourselves or fixed ideas about what we are and who we are.

Fixed the limited ideas that contains often a lot of limitations.

And then if we relate to ourselves with this,

Then there's no place for,

There's no sense of freedom and no place for growth,

I think.

So it's solidifying reality as it seems our brain are doing with these waves that comes is needed so that we find our way in life.

This same Wolf singer was explaining how we perceive only the waves,

The brain perceives only the waves that are needed to perceive for reproduction,

For security,

Health.

So the species have chosen by like naturally selected what we really need to perceive and what is not really needed is not perceived kind of.

Yeah.

And then it has selected colors and shapes and given colors and shapes to things.

It's quite extreme.

So without this,

We wouldn't be able to function in the world.

So we need to have a good way of creating image so that we can relate to them.

But this creation of image must be efficient.

Like it must be good stories,

Good models.

That's one thing we need to create good models.

It's a little bit what we did on the second week.

Yeah.

What kind of model and what kind of narrative do we want to create about life?

That's one part,

But also knowing that this is a model I think is important.

This is not life,

How it is.

Anything we think about life or anything we think about ourselves or the situation of the world right now,

Or anything we think about is not the expression of what reality is.

It is the narrative,

The story that we make.

And if that narrative and story works well,

Which means it's freeing and giving a good direction,

Then this is a good narrative enough.

But let's not believe that this is an ultimate truth because then we become fanatics.

As I quoted this quote of Gandhi who said,

Everybody has his own definition of what reality is.

And so every human on earth has a different understanding of what reality is.

And I'm not sure that even one is right because it's not even about right and wrong in my understanding.

It's not that the way we understand life and the way we understand ourselves and the image of ourselves,

I am this,

I am that,

I do this,

I do that.

It's not if it is right or correct or not correct,

Right or wrong,

But does it work,

This narrative?

Is it useful?

So in meditation,

We can look to see the gaps,

To see that things are not just so solid.

There are holes in things and things contain their opposites.

Yeah?

Gaps,

Absence,

And also contain their opposite.

We can see this in meditation.

And like one example that I was saying is with pain,

For instance,

That works really well.

But it can be also with the body sensations,

For instance.

But the sensation is there and then there will be moment where you cannot feel it.

If you're very precise enough,

It will be there and there will be gaps moment where it's not there,

This body sensation.

And we can understand that the mind construct a solidity around this body sensation.

And usually we have the idea that it's always the same and that it's always there.

And it's not if we look in depth.

So that gives us a little bit of insight into how it is possible,

Maybe,

That our system is part of the way reality appear.

That reality is not like this,

But it has a certain amount of constructing,

Of solidifying,

So that we can work with it.

And then another major entrance into realizing how that things are not that solid as we think is impermanence.

And Buddhism Anicca is one of the main theme,

Well one very important theme.

And get the easiest entry to realize impermanence means nothing lasts.

Everything has a beginning,

A duration and an end.

So there's no need to register to a seminar to know that or to understand that.

But the very interesting thing is like although nobody is surprised by what I'm saying,

We still do live as things were quite permanent,

Including ourselves.

It seems that it takes some time and effort and really looking into the subject before we get to really know that no,

It's not stable,

No,

It's not durable.

Yes,

It's gonna end.

Anything from this moment of this seminar in one hour it's finished and to the extent of every moment of our life and to the extent of our life itself.

It's kind of obvious and yet we live as if we were permanent.

So impermanence in one way could be said to be awareness of death somehow.

And that sounds very dramatic and we all have different sensitivities also in this area.

But it can start and it can be only awareness that anything that is happening in this moment will not stay like this.

So for instance if we have a good awareness of death or we could say little death,

Then the moments where there is a sense of pleasure for instance we honor it.

It's like if we're in family with some people we love around the table sharing a nice meal for instance.

If we have a good awareness of the discontinuity of the fact that it's not gonna stay like this forever.

If we live this moment with this awareness then we do pay much more attention to the beauty of it.

We do live it more intensely because we know it's not gonna stay and it's not gonna come back.

Never will it come back the same,

Never.

Even if we have the same people eating the same meal the next day it's not gonna be the same.

So when we are aware that things don't last,

Not only that we know and when we hear we say yes of course I know this,

But when we live with the awareness that nothing lasts then we tend to make more fruit and to pay more respect to the situation we go through.

And also when we have difficult times it's also helpful because it brings a lot of patience because we know it's not gonna last.

Nothing lasts.

And in meditation we explore and we see this and the easiest way is with sounds.

Every sound that we hear has a beginning,

A duration and an end.

So meditation on sounds usually brings insights into the non-continuity of things.

The non-continuity of things.

And it's a matter of being familiar enough so that we can always remember when we want.

We can bring this to our memory and use this understanding to enhance or deal with what we're going through.

Once we have clearly deeply realized which is I will say it again not only knowing that but realized in our own experience through spending hours watching the movement of life and looking for something that is stable and finding nothing,

Nothing,

Nothing.

Then at this moment we can recall this at hand anytime we need it.

It's not that we live always with this sense but every time there's something beautiful we will remember that we should enjoy it because it's not gonna last.

And every time there is something difficult we will remember that it's not gonna last and it will be of very good help.

And so you see this benefit of meditation is different than the world famous living the present moment for instance.

You know this is very different because it helps living the present moment yes but it's through using understanding.

It is through using understanding.

Only the present moment without the understanding as one of my teacher Christopher Titmuss said it's the tyranny of the present moment,

The tyranny of the present moment.

Like if we see children,

Very young children,

They don't have this understanding that things don't last.

We even if we didn't practice meditation we have kind of more intimacy somehow but for the children it's like everything is total.

What they live is the totality of what exists somehow.

There's no perspective on it.

So if a baby is hungry there is only hunger.

It's just like there's no future.

There's not all if you say to a young child he wants something and you say okay in half an hour it means nothing,

Nothing.

He is living this and he has doesn't have this ability to put in perspective.

So he's fully in the present moment.

You see fully in the present moment and they live what is called emotional storms.

They go through emotional storms because they cannot put this in perspective so that it's fruitful and that they can go through in a healthy way.

We can,

We can a little bit or we can very much if we have enough wisdom and understanding that comes from our direct experience not only from knowledge.

So in meditation and that's what we're going to do this week we're going to spend time with observing the beginnings and ends of things.

What appears and disappear and appear and disappear everything,

Everything appears and disappears.

And we never maybe most of us spend time watching this that so if we if we use the sounds usually we will use the sounds to feel present when we hear a sound then we are present.

Yeah we're kind of not distracted but here on top of that our focus and intention during the meditation will be to notice the beginning duration and ends.

It's kind of one more thing ending,

One more thing ending,

One more and this also ending and that also ending and that also ending and we just watch the thing coming and going coming and going and nothing staying in all areas of our experience.

Body sensations,

Even the breath there are moments where you won't feel the breath it's not there when the mind is very very quiet you can't feel your breath it's gone everything comes and goes comes and goes.

In the sounds in the body sensations the emotions come and go all the times mind states come and goes all the times thoughts comes and goes all the time consciousness comes and goes all the time there's nothing we can grab that is there all the time.

So experimenting,

Exploring,

Seeing,

Looking directly to realize this not only to understand but to go deeper than understanding and seeing it,

Watching it,

Transform the way we live.

When we,

One of the benefits of this practice is that when we know things don't last it's much easier to let go,

To let go of attachment,

To let go of fear,

To let go of wanting things to be different than what they are it's gonna change anyway.

Some traditions in meditation they go,

They're fierce enough they just meditate on death itself like visualizing the body on the ground,

Visualizing the body eaten by worms,

You know,

Sitting and seeing your own body like this,

You know.

So this is not because they like dark images but it's more because it's a way to really get it because it's hard to get it's very hard to get that everything has an end even our life and if they do so it's not it's because there is a deep understanding that knowing and being at peace with the fact that we also will die liberates enormously the way we live.

I know so many people who do not dare to love because it may end.

So meditation also another area that is very interesting is a consciousness.

We may notice that we're not always hundred percent present.

I'm sure you noticed.

So now we will still try to be present as much as we can through using the senses but when we will find ourself in thoughts then we will see that this was a movement that it was like the end of presence happened and then it was the beginning of the dream or whatever and the moment we realize that we're in the dream and that we come back to anchoring to presence then we will see this is the end of the dream.

We will see all beginnings duration and ends even with presence consciousness nothing is continuously and steady it seems it is a search it is a search in spirituality it is a search of something that is always there the omniscient the ever-present the one the not two you know this is a search is there something that is always presence regardless of us being present and absent or regardless of everything moving that is something the when we come to this then you will have depending on traditions will have different answers like Hindu and Buddhist wouldn't agree very much on this theme but it at that level of the questioning if we go there with our exploration it's already quite good yeah it's it's a but it can be for me it's still it's it's still very much part of my search is there anything in me that I can know that is always there in the three states deep sleep dream dream and wake is there something that doesn't move there's something that doesn't come and go regardless of presence and absence even in deep sleep now this these kinds of questions forces to search and forces this is now we're speaking about self-knowledge but not at the level of oh I know myself and I'm like this and I'm like that this is just ideas about ourselves for me this is self-knowledge at the very surface we could say that our being but when we dive into the question of is there anything of me that is ever present which means this would be more me than anything else I hope you're with me you follow if there's something of me that is always there regardless of if I'm sleeping I'm dreaming I'm I'm awake I mean this mind state I mean that mind state and I'm kind I'm kind I'm always changing I was there already with the same when I was a child and we still do same now in this age will still be the same just at the last breath before my death is there something that is more they're always there then this is the knee it is not what I was when I was a child and my ways of thinking and and and my stories and my understandings and the style of body that has changed everything has changed so this search we can see it also in this way we contemplate everything that changes all the time with a background question of is there anything that does not come and go that does not change and we will find that there are definitely some things in our beings that are less subject to time than others some things got very fast like thoughts one minute to the other the world of thought changes totally visuals I just turned my head and I see something totally different it changes it it's a speed light emotions how many emotions do I go through in one day mine states they can last some time a few days yeah a bit longer than emotion emotion sparks and very very flame like mind state they can stay longer but the feeling I get when I am fully present seems to be more giving me more sense of continuity I hope are you with me the feeling that we get not only when we are with our breath or listening to the sound but also when we know we know we're present we know we're listening we know we're with the breath we're not just only with the breath we do know we feel our ourself we feel our own presence that feeling seems to be seems to be and I very careful with what I'm saying seems to be the same that when I was a child they seem to have something a bit more continuous there my access to it is not continuous that's sure is it there when I don't access to it I don't know it's very what's what's your reaction to what I'm saying now maybe like they can be all kinds of oh what is this about or oh wow whatever what do you feel be aware of your response to what is said now it's quite important what I'm sharing with you is the way I share it is just like it's my questions it's it's what is central in my life but it's not only my questions you find these questions in books of thousand years old and across the planet expressed differently but always the same question always the same question what is my essence is there something that is not subject to time is there something that is not constructed if we want to know I think for me the only way is to first be very clear with what is constructed what in my sense of identity is a construct of the mind what in my sense of who I am is actually induced by IDs that I have about myself very very freeing because we're trapped with our ideas about ourselves and about we're trapped about our solidification and ideas about the world life others and all all IDs are solidified solidifying things that are always in move and that are not what we think they are of this I have profound what's the word intuition of this I have a profound intuition that things are not the way we think they are and when I read guys like Nils Bohr,

Nisargadatta Maharaj,

Buddha and progress of the science it seems from so many angles when we search we find people who say the same thing coming from very different backgrounds so in order to find the freeing aspect of changing our understanding and our experience our intimacy with the way things are and the way things are not curiosity is central to me not believing anything trying everything so this exploration of impermanence will help us will teach us and help us how to let go in the places where we stuck with views and opinions that are not helpful for us and others you