Infinite Self

If the self is infinite, nothing essential separates us. If there is no self (anattā), there is nothing to separate us. It is often easier to expand out to include everything than to shrink down to nothing. I think the Buddha would agree. Please Note: This track was recorded live and may contain background noises.

Transcript

Good evening.

Good evening.

So tonight I want to leap off a cliff.

We'll see.

We'll see.

As I mentioned last night,

I was interested in speculating on what the Buddha might teach if he were alive with us today.

I suspect the core teachings would be the same,

But human consciousness has changed so much in the last 2500 years that he might have other techniques or approaches.

This is a pretty audacious topic for me to take on,

But I figure what the heck.

At least once during a retreat,

We'll go for a book.

We'll see what happens.

So tonight I'd like to speak about the infinitely expanding self.

And I want to give you some background that may take a little bit to go through,

So bear with me.

But I do promise that we will come back to meditation and you will see how it's all relevant,

But at times that might not be clear.

We'll see.

So as always,

I want to start with a story.

Jean Houston was one of the pioneers of the human potential movement back in the 50s and 60s,

And she's still at it now with her school of sacred psychology,

An amazing woman.

In her younger years,

She lived in the Upper East Side of New York City.

One morning she was running down the sidewalk,

Late for her school bus as usual,

When she whipped around a corner and ran smack into this old man,

Knocking them both off their feet.

As they struggled to get back up,

She said,

Excuse me,

Excuse me,

Excuse me,

I'm so sorry,

Can I help you up,

Can I help you?

And he kind of dusted himself off a little bit and looked at her and said,

Young lady,

Are you going to be in such a hurry all your life?

Well sir,

I don't know sir,

I guess so sir.

And he smiled and his eyes turned sparkly and he said,

Well then,

Bon voyage!

In the following days,

This first abrupt encounter turned into longer conversations.

She could never quite get his name because he had this very thick French accent,

But it was tear or tear or something like that.

So she took to calling him Mr.

Thayer and pretty soon she and Mr.

Thayer were taking walks in Central Park together.

And he had this bright,

Intelligent,

Playful spirit and consciousness and,

Zhong zhong,

He would say,

Come,

Come,

Look,

Look at this caterpillar,

Look at him crawl up that leaf,

How does he know how to move all those feet together?

Zhong zhong,

Look at this spider,

This beautiful web,

How could she figure out how to do that?

He seemed just enchanted with the natural world.

Then she didn't see him for a few days and a few days more and a few days after that.

She couldn't really check on him because she actually didn't know where he lived.

And then one day,

Down on a back page in the New York Times,

She saw his photograph,

Mom,

It's Mr.

Thayer!

And the caption on it said,

Sunday night,

Thierry de Chardin died of a heart attack.

Thierry de Chardin,

As some of you know,

Was a Jesuit priest who had been censored by the church for some of his ideas that he expressed in his manuscript called The Phenomenon of Man.

It wasn't even published until after he died because the church didn't like it so much.

And they couldn't quite figure out what to do with him.

So they had sent him to live out his remaining days at the church of St.

Ignatius Loyola on Park Avenue.

So Jean Houston had been rambling in the park with one of the 20th century's greatest theologians.

And I just love the image of this old man with his sparkly eyes looking at this young woman and saying,

Bon voyage!

And I love the image of them rambling in the park together.

He was just delighted in the caterpillars and the spiders and the trees and the sun.

He was,

Sense of self didn't seem to cling to his body or his personality.

He was just out there,

Just out there merged with the natural world.

So what would that feel like?

To be so relaxed that your consciousness,

The borders of it,

Just blended with the world around.

What would that be like to have a consciousness just clear and crisp as a spring morning air and not weighed down by thoughts about this body,

This personality,

My ideas,

My thoughts.

What would that be like to be Thier de Chardin just merged with the wonders of life itself?

Thier de Chardin was a Catholic,

At least nominally.

We are Buddhists,

At least nominally.

But I think the path that we are pursuing here points in the direction and the spirit embodied by Thier de Chardin.

So last night we were talking about and exploring selflessness,

Anatta.

And as you all know the Buddha never said that we don't have a self.

He just said we don't have any self essence that separates us from everyone else.

So we could call this selflessness or we could call it an infinite self that has expanded so far that it includes everyone and everything.

It says the same things,

They move in opposite directions but they actually arrive at the same place.

T.

S.

Eliot said,

We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all exploring will be to arrive where we started and know that place for the first time.

So the path to selflessness or non-self may have been more accessible to people in the Buddha's time and for some reasons that I'd like to explore with you tonight I think the path to the infinite self is probably much more available to us today.

In the Buddha's time non-self and the path to non-self may have been much more accessible to those people but today the path to the infinite self I think is much more accessible to us.

And they arrive at the same place,

It's just they get at it a whole different way.

We'll see.

So what I'd like to do is step back from all this and look at the development of consciousness,

How it has evolved in the last thousands of years.

Over,

Probably over a million years ago the human brain became quite malleable.

The capacity of the human brain to learn from its environment,

From the creatures around it,

Just skyrocketed.

And since then human evolution has not been about DNA in genes anymore.

It's really much more about how we train the flexible minds of our children.

So our evolution today has very little to do with teeth and bones and claws and bigger muscles but has everything to do with consciousness.

In English the word consciousness has two very different meanings.

I think we touched on it maybe the first night or something like that.

One meaning of consciousness is actually a synonym with awareness.

Someone loses consciousness,

What we're saying is they're losing their awareness.

It's gone.

And in the suttas when the word consciousness is used it's usually referring to awareness.

Eye consciousness is different than ear consciousness.

It simply means that hearing awareness and seeing awareness are different.

Duh.

Of course they are,

They're very different realms.

The other meaning of the word consciousness is how we process information and assign meaning to it.

When a five year old and his grandpa are walking down the beach they may see the same ocean,

See the same birds,

Feel the same sand,

Smell the same salt air,

But the world they're living in is completely different because they process information and assign meaning to it in very different ways.

So when we're talking about the evolution of consciousness we're talking about the evolution of how we process information and assign meaning to it.

So there are people like Clare Graves,

Ken Wilber probably most famously have really plotted out how this has evolved over many many many many thousands of years.

So we'll go back a hundred thousand years maybe when our ancestors were living in the primeval forest or out on the savannas.

And a few of them for some reason had an instinct to bond to one another,

To actually look out for each other.

You know when there was danger they just didn't worry about themselves,

They saw danger somebody else and called out.

So this tendency to bond and look out for one another created or gave rise to what today we call tribal consciousness.

And tribal consciousness has no sense of self or individuality as we understand it today.

In tribal consciousness self-identity is merged with the tribe,

With the people,

With the customs that are passed down from the ancestors.

They operate probably more like a hive of bees.

So this instinctive cooperation allowed them to protect each other,

Live longer,

Reproduce more.

It was very successful.

But tribal consciousness is quite rigid,

It doesn't move or change very easily.

So in times of rapid change it had some difficulty.

So thousands of years ago there was another consciousness that arose out of this that today we call magic heroic.

What happened was there would be a few people who had thoughts,

Impulses,

Ideas,

Feelings that just didn't blend with the tribal mentality.

And rather than filter them out they would act on them and it felt powerful and invigory.

Actually we all go through these stages ourselves as we grow up.

So if you have a child who is at this stage,

For example I have this little table here with a couple of Buddhas in front and this clock back here.

If we had a child sitting there and gave them some crayons and paper and say,

Can you draw a picture of what this looks like to me?

The child would draw not what it looks like to me but what it looks like to them because that's what they see.

So before a certain age a child just doesn't have the cognitive,

The intellectual capacity to create an image of something and turn it around in their mind and look at it from the other side.

It's called being perceptually seduced as we mentioned the other night.

In a similar way,

Magic heroic leaders don't intentionally disregard the thoughts and ideas and needs of those around them.

They just have a consciousness where they just can't imagine anyone having a perspective different than theirs.

Menelaus,

Remember Menelaus he was the king of Sparta and his wife Helen ran off with Paris,

This wayward prince of Troy and Menelaus was upset,

Was angry and he went after her and all the armies followed him into the Trojan Wars.

Now was this really in the best interest of the average Spartan,

You know to go into war to get this guy's wife back?

No one even thought to ask that question.

Ours is not the question why,

Ours is but to do or die,

Hoorah and off they go into war.

I was talking to this ex-special forces guy at the gym and we got to talking and after a while he just stopped and he looked at me and he said,

Oh you're a thinker.

You get that?

He saw himself as a doer.

When he was an intelligent guy,

But he was perfectly comfortable letting the chain of command make the decisions and he was actually proud of the fact that he was the one that could make it happen,

He was a doer.

So other examples of magic heroic consciousness include Egyptian pharaohs,

You know they were considered gods,

Every whim was a law,

Genghis Khan,

Attila the Hun,

Feudal systems,

Jesus as savior,

Magic heroic thinking.

In modern times we have street gangs,

The villains in James Bond movies,

Wild rock stars,

Frontier mentality and children we see it as parallel play,

Terrible twos.

So these heroic cultures,

You know you have a leader who can make decisions in battle and so they were much more adaptive and much more effective in battle in times of rapid change so they were quite successful.

But there are some real drawbacks to this heroic consciousness.

For one thing it's quite bloody.

Just imagine,

Another thing is just imagine the Spartan soldiers rowing their ships back from the Trojan wars.

Well all the spoils of war went to Menelaus and a few inner circle.

They didn't even think about them.

So as these tribes and small cities began to grow,

More and more people would risk their life and got little in return.

So they needed to be taken into account.

So gradually a new consciousness emerged which expanded the circle of caring from me to me and us.

So today we call this consciousness a traditional,

A literal or mythic.

So people came to care about not just themselves but also their people,

Their family,

Their tribe.

We care about our own.

We take care of our own.

So to accomplish this what they did was the power to make these laws and rules was taken away from a self-centric boss and given to a god out there who cared for all of his people.

So for example consider the twelve tribes of Israel.

They go way back far enough and they all had separate gods and separate localities they would meet out in the desert and walk on one another.

But eventually what happened was Yahweh emerged as a trans-tribal god who was over all of them.

So now when they met in the desert they had some common ground for which they could cooperate.

So this allowed for the gathering of larger cities,

People to live in larger cities and nations.

The rules that were passed down from on high,

You know from these gods,

Tended to be quite literal,

Authoritarian and group-centric,

You know as opposed to self-centric.

Examples today include ethnocentrism,

Love it or leave it,

Patriotism,

Fundamentalism of all stripes,

Jesus as law giver,

Lake Wobegon,

Traditional values,

Traditional values is the whole phrase and of course one of the most infamous ones to arrive on the scene these days is Isis.

They're not magic heroic,

They're really traditional.

And you can see what happens within those traditional value systems,

There's us and my people and those who are outside that system are not quite fully human.

So in the mid 17th century,

Scoot ahead many centuries,

A new consciousness emerged which is called modern or modern rational.

It emerged in the west and this included the circle of carrying expanded to include me,

Us and them.

So it got a little bit larger.

And with this there was a sense that god laws could be discerned not just by studying the sacred texts that the priests kept all the keys to,

But you could actually learn by just observing god's world out there.

So for example,

Galileo when he was trying to figure out some of the ways this world worked rather than just looking at sacred text,

He looked through his telescope.

And what happens with modern rational is that it is really more concerned with the bottom line and it's very willing to throw old authorities overboard if they needed to do that.

So,

Magic heroic is a self-centric me first person perspective.

Traditional literal is an ethnocentric second person me,

You and heck with the rest of them.

And modern rational is a world centric.

It's a third person me,

You and all of them out there.

Modern rational consciousness was wildly successful.

It was incredibly successful.

Within 100 to 150 years slavery was outlawed in all modern societies.

It had been a part of human culture for thousands and thousands of years.

Suddenly it just vanished.

Science extended human life expectancy by several decades.

So examples of modern consciousness include the western enlightenment,

The emerging middle class,

Jesus as tradition breaker,

The one who went there and threw the money changers out of the temple.

I love to go back to these images of Jesus because you'll see in various religions people in different stages of consciousness have different images.

So this is Jesus as tradition breaker.

Scientific revolution obviously is another example of modern rational.

Industrial revolution,

Wall Street,

Monroe Doctrine,

Advertising industry,

Chambers of commerce,

Transnational corporations.

Those are our modern rational.

So the advantage of modern scientific thinking in the western enlightenment,

They're really hard to overstate.

However,

By the middle of the 20th century there were some real limitations that were beginning to emerge.

So if you look at transnational corporations as a poster child of this,

They are rational,

High tech,

And they are very interested not only in how they think and our people think,

But they're very interested in how other people think,

Right?

So they can exploit them.

So modern rational consciousness was very willing to overlook the well-being of others in the environment if it suited their spreadsheet.

You with me on this?

Yes.

Well,

It was actually a wider vision of the mythic literature.

I don't want to go too far down this,

But what happens is there's a swing back and forth of these from who's most important,

Whether it's the individual or the collective.

And you see in all of these it just swings back and forth.

Claire Graves is the one who really lays this out and spiral dynamics if you're interested.

So there's a tribal,

Which there is no individual,

And then there's the magic heroic when the individual is all in.

And then you get into the traditional,

Which it really looks at us.

And then in the modern rational,

The individual arises again,

And it's not really quite responsible for others.

So what happens is that it swings back.

So in the middle of the 20th century,

This new consciousness emerged,

And at first they didn't know what to call it,

So they just called it postmodern,

But it's really pluralistic.

And postmodern pluralistic consciousness truly valued everyone.

It valued helping the oppressed,

Feelings,

Inclusiveness,

Consensus,

Collaboration,

Everything is beautiful in its own way.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

No,

We'll actually come back to that.

So I'm actually talking about the consciousness itself and what the ideals were.

And within any given society there's actually a whole bunch of these.

So the postmodern pluralists,

They really do value those.

You get back to the earlier stages,

It's sometimes the reigns of power.

Postmodern pluralism gave rise to the civil rights movement.

Feminism,

Gay rights,

ACLU,

Jesus as humanitarian,

Greenpeace,

Doctors without borders,

Animal rights have began to extend beyond humans to include animals,

Deep ecology,

Sensitivity training,

Occupy Wall Street,

Those are all postmodern pluralistic.

Okay,

So now let's step back and look at all this.

So collectively these first five stages are called first tier consciousness.

As we go from tribal to heroic to traditional mythic literal to modern to postmodern pluralism,

You can see how the circle of caring extended out to include more people and more creatures.

And as it expanded out,

It also became much more complex because of the much greater variety.

So what emerges out of this is inclusiveness and complexity become measures of maturity.

However,

There's one limitation that you're kind of alluding to of all these first tier stages.

They all think that their way of thinking,

My way of thinking is the only reasonable one.

And people at earlier stages are Neanderthal,

They're just stupid.

And people at higher stages than them are hippies spaced out on psychedelics,

They just kind of left the real world.

So even the most advanced postmodern pluralists,

They really don't understand people who think differently than they do.

They may value them,

But they can't actually empathize with them because they don't really get it.

And if we look around the world today,

What we see are these last three stages,

Traditional,

Modern rational and postmodernism are the ones that dominate the more advanced societies and a lot of developing ones as well.

And they are trying to destroy each other.

They are trying to,

You know,

You look,

So our attempt to put modern rational democratic values onto Iraq was just an incredible fiasco.

Iraq was a collection of tribes under a heroic leader,

Or we might say a super villain,

A strong man,

And you can't just impose a different set of values,

You have to really understand how these other people think and operate.

But our leadership certainly just didn't.

So,

And similarly if you look at all the conflicts around the world,

Most of them are between peoples that are at different stages of consciousness.

And they are literally killing each other.

So at the end of the 20th century,

Not that long ago,

There was another stage that emerged which is now called second tier or integral because it can understand empathetically how different people think and actually relate to them and engage with them on their terms without being patronizing.

That's a tough one but that's a really important one.

They can relate to them on their own terms without being patronizing.

So what happens is in integral they begin to see these different stages as just developmental.

So a child who understands calculus is more advanced in math than a child who just knows arithmetic,

But it's not that one is more valuable than the other.

So there is this developmental.

And there is also a recognition that there are different types of thinking that are needed for different situations.

So if the building were to catch fire,

We could have a postmodern pluralistic meaning.

So we would all sing we shall overcome and we will all go around and check in and see how we feel about this fire.

And then we are sure everybody understands how everybody else feels,

Then we will brainstorm for a while about what kind of responses we might have to this.

And then we will work to find a consensus on what order we want to do with them and then see if anybody wants to volunteer to help.

Okay,

So what stage of consciousness is Julian speaking from?

I know.

And as we all know,

Because I have worked with organizations for a long time,

What actually happens is not what anybody planned for.

And actually,

Quite frankly,

If the building were on fire,

We would want a heroic leader.

It's not even a doer if we are looking for a leader,

We want somebody who will stand up and say,

Look,

You get the kids,

You check to make sure that the rooms are empty,

You call the fire department,

Everybody move.

It's a heroic leader.

So that's what happens with integral,

You can actually see,

Understand and appreciate that there is actually a lot of value in these different ways of thinking,

It's just a matter of figuring out how to apply them.

So what happens in integral thinking is that there is this capacity to hold in mind at once a whole bunch of different systems,

A whole bunch of different ways of thinking and figure out which is appropriate for the circumstance.

Where do we find these people?

They are around.

Why are we those integrals?

I would say that most people who have an advanced degree,

At least intellectually,

Can do integral thinking because that's what you do in a lot of graduate programs,

You have this theory and this theory and this way of doing it and you are asked to do a comparison between all of them.

Here is an example,

Karl Rove.

Intellectually,

He was clearly integral.

If you look at his strategies he thought different people worked and all that and set up all these different strategies.

Now his value system was traditional.

We take care of our own,

The heck with the rest of them.

Intellectually he was capable of doing that so people can be in different places in these.

But that ignores that it makes a difference who our own are.

If they are the capitalist class and the people who want to steal the world's oil,

That's one group.

If it's democratic,

That's a different group.

Yes.

So it's not neutral in the sense that you are not a capitalist group.

But when you were describing what integrated person was like,

I'm sure you are going to be saying that.

I mean,

He was obviously an integrated person because he could talk to people and he was never patronizing.

He could address people on so many different levels.

So that's our example of what ultimately integrated person.

I'm speaking from a traditional perspective.

And I think that's one way we can tell where we are.

Where are these people?

You can tell where they are by having them interact with people who are at different levels of consciousness.

But it takes one to know one actually because what you are talking about to recognize that is the capacity inside you to actually recognize different ways of thinking.

So I do want to get back to that but there are just a couple of pieces I wanted to pick up.

Was there something you had Pat?

I think Pat was right.

I think he had his,

What do they call it,

GRE.

You were saying that people with advanced degrees have that intellectually.

That doesn't mean they have it socially.

Oh yes,

Absolutely.

These apply to all kinds of,

I'm actually trying to keep this to the point where we can keep it within a reasonable amount of time.

But right,

There's this endless complexity that goes out there.

So where are we here?

Okay,

So we want to go one step further.

So integral is the most advanced that has an appreciable number of people in.

So the question is,

Is this as far as it goes?

So it's easy to think about it but there's a little bit,

It's easy to think that maybe so but yes,

It's the slightest reflection saying look how much advanced,

It'd be silly to think it's going to stop.

So it's reasonable to think that our children and grandchildren are going to have available to them stages of consciousness that we actually have difficulty imagining.

I think it can be as difficult for us to imagine what might be coming next as it would be for a tribal person to imagine pluralism because it's a whole new way of thinking.

However,

This is where it gets fun.

There is a little bit of data that suggests what the next stage might be like.

So second tier integral consciousness,

We have the ability to step out of our own way of thinking and see it objectively as well as seeing different ones objectively.

What seems to happen in third tier is that a person's identity becomes unmoored from any particular consciousness.

And it begins to extend out beyond one body,

One personality,

One way of thinking,

One set of values,

One lifestyle to include more and more people.

Thiers de Chardin's mystical merge with the natural world I think is an example of that.

He wasn't just out there observing and appreciating,

He was actually one with it.

He was just out there with all of it.

So if that story resonates with you in any way,

Then you have probably had glimpses.

If you can resonate with that,

You have a sense of what that is.

What happens in third tier is rather than just glimpses,

It becomes a more or less permanent shift,

A permanent abiding if you will,

From a single organism to a larger collective.

One awareness looking through many different perspectives.

Third tier,

The label they are putting on it now is transcendence because we transcend our sort of innocent beginnings of consciousness in one organism to actually identify on some very deep way with more than one body,

One personality etc.

Ok,

You with me?

Ok,

So.

Yeah,

Yeah.

Well the difficulty,

Yeah it's very very hopeful.

These are developmental crises and it takes that to bring these forth but the problem is that there is no guarantee that we will traverse the crisis successfully.

So it's extremely hopeful and who knows?

99.

9999% of the species that were ever born on the planet are now extinct,

You know,

And so we could put ourselves out.

But there are things that are emerging.

I really remember an interview,

I'll show you quickly,

Of Stephen Hawking.

You know,

After everything,

You know,

Ed said,

What do you think about our chances of being a species kind of interview?

And at the end they said,

Well so what do you think?

Will mankind survive?

And he waited and then he said,

Oooh.

It was great.

Yeah.

So what does this have to do with meditation?

So some people would say nothing and from a certain perspective that's true because meditation is mostly about awareness.

Ok?

And awareness and consciousness are not the same thing.

So awareness deepens from normal perception,

You know,

The physical world to subtle awareness of thoughts,

Feelings,

Images,

Insights,

You know,

The internal world to very subtle awareness of the workings of the mind to pure awareness.

Consciousness evolves from tribal to traditional to rational to pluralistic to integral to transcendent.

They are not the same thing.

They are not the same thing.

Meditation is mostly about states of awareness.

Maturity is about stages of consciousness.

Meditation is about waking up.

Maturity is about growing up.

Consciousness is about growing up.

Meditation is about cleansing the mirror of awareness.

Consciousness is about how we interpret what we see in the mirror of awareness.

Most of the Buddha's teachings are actually about awareness.

The jhanas are all about cleansing the awareness until we get to pure awareness.

His teachings about impermanence,

You know,

And suffering,

They are all things we can directly experience.

However,

His teachings about anatta are not about awareness.

They are about how we interpret information and assign meaning to it.

So his teachings,

That's one of the reasons that it's a little kind of an oddball for people to try to work with because it actually is about consciousness,

Anatta is about consciousness.

Does that make sense?

So I wonder if the Buddha felt really frustrated by this,

You know.

So he's trying to convey all this but the urge to project a sense of self,

Bhava-tanah he called it,

Is deeply wired into us.

So he kept saying over and over again,

Stop interpreting,

There is no me,

There is no mine,

There is no myself,

Stop the workings of consciousness,

See directly what's going on,

Not so easy to do.

For those of you who know the chakasuta,

Anybody who's been with bhanti has heard this a bunch of times,

In the chakasuta for example he says,

The eye is impermanent,

It comes and goes in time,

There is no permanent self in the eye.

To think the eye itself is just wrong,

Light is impermanent,

It comes and goes,

There is no permanent self there,

To think light itself is just wrong.

Seeing is impermanent,

It comes and goes,

There is no permanent self there,

To think seeing itself is just wrong.

And he drones on and on and on,

Naming every possible combination of sensations and feeling tone and liking and disliking.

And after all of them he says,

There is no permanent self there,

To think there is is just wrong.

Bhikkhu Bodhi translated it as,

You know,

To say there is is unacceptable.

But what's he really saying in the modern language,

You're just wrong,

It just doesn't work that way.

It takes over an hour just to read that whole sutta.

It's as if he were trying to pound it into the heads of monks,

Look,

Stop interpreting,

Stop creating the sense of self,

Stop creating sand castles in the air.

So to,

So.

He was in a society,

Yeah,

I'm getting to that,

As the permanent essence.

Yeah,

But where did that come from?

He was,

He was at his time,

The highest stage of consciousness that was generally available was literal mythic.

Same as modern day fundamentalist,

Which has an incredibly dense sense of self.

You and me,

Us and them,

Good guys and bad guys.

He said,

He just included it for us.

So,

I don't know,

I think it was really trying to move people along.

But as you say,

It was really the skillful means.

You know,

With seeing where they were and coming up with some techniques that would work with that.

And what would work with them is just stop thinking about it,

Just stop,

Just cut it out.

And I agree with you,

I don't,

It's clear that the Buddha was not mythic literal himself.

You know,

He's most famous for saying,

Look,

You gotta work this out on your own,

You gotta examine your own experience.

That is a modern rational value.

You know,

The traditional values really look,

You know,

Have this really kind of solid sense of self.

And as you were saying,

He was actually brilliant at recognizing how different people thought.

I don't think we'll ever know if he was,

You know,

Truly postmodern or integral or something else.

Because everything he said was remembered and interpreted and codified by people who were mostly traditional literal and a few heroic quite frankly.

It's like,

You know,

I think of Stephen Hawking,

So you send me the lecture by Stephen Hawking and I'll come back and tell you what he said.

Right?

What I could convey would be seriously constrained by my understanding of theoretical physics and in the same way,

What his followers could convey of what he taught was seriously constrained by their own stage of consciousness.

For me,

Your account seems to leave out a really crucial component which the Buddha was always stressing,

Which is,

What is the behavioral code?

Is it applied equally and fairly to everybody?

What is the implicit concept of hierarchy within that worldview?

Because you could also argue that the essential code of being loving and good to other people is built into the system because unless you can behave in a loving and peaceful way,

Then you actually can't become enlightened because you can't be an enlightened dictator,

You see what I mean,

Or an enlightened evil person,

For example.

They're self-contradictory.

And in a way,

This whole account is missing that dimension because it's so crucially important.

What are the behavioral limitations and codes and rules that the Buddha would be comfortable with because that actually in practice translates into how you run your society which says,

What is going on?

I'm not arguing what his level of development is.

And I think that's a really,

Really difficult one because it's very easy to project our value,

Our way of interpreting onto what somebody else thought.

So I would say that we just don't know.

What we do know is that he was incredibly successful because there were thousands and thousands of people around who really woke up.

The only thing that I would just go on to say is that our situation today is very different.

In most of the Sanhas that I've been part of,

Most of the people there are actually pluralistic.

They value feelings,

They value consensus,

They value ecology,

They value taking care of the oppressed,

You know,

Sticking up for the downtrodden,

Ecology,

Everything is relative and beautiful in its own way.

Those are all pluralistic values.

In the general population today,

And at least in the developing world,

About 20% of the people are pluralistic and about 5% are integral.

And I think in the Western Sanhas,

Those percentages are probably higher.

So,

We are not that far from third tier transcendence.

So we're talking about meditation in our own practice.

When I say we,

I mean within the Buddhist Sanhas and within the room here,

This is a we we're talking about.

I'm not talking about Saddam Hussein and Dick Cheney.

But I'm saying we,

In terms of our own work,

Are not that far from it.

Because I know many of you have,

Quite frankly,

Had glimpses of it.

In deep meditation you go into the place where the awareness becomes clear and pure and luminous.

And it's awareness that feels closer to who you are than anything you've ever experienced.

Because it's the awareness through which you experience thoughts,

Memories,

Sensations,

Everything.

And at the same time,

That clear awareness doesn't feel personal.

It extends beyond the boundaries of who and what you are.

So,

You know what I'm talking about?

And then what happens is it fades.

It collapses.

So,

We get these glimpses.

And again,

In third tier is a more or less permanent shift of consciousness into this.

You don't quite come back.

So if you've had a taste of that,

If any of this sounds familiar,

You're not that far away.

And so,

I would think if the Buddha were here talking to us,

He would be looking at what is it we can do to kind of nudge people there.

It's not that far away.

Yeah,

Just a little bit of dust left.

So how is it that we can move that along?

So today what I would suggest is that rather than fight against the sense of self,

Which I think is a biological reflex that has been wired into us by evolution,

That did not fight it.

I think he had to.

That's why he just kept pounding it.

But what we can do today is actually the opposite of actually just surrender into that sense of self.

And as we do that,

Just allow our sense of self to expand out.

So we're dropping into a sense of self,

But allowing it to spread out.

So it includes more and more and more people and creatures.

And that's all the Buddha taught,

Right?

He never said we don't have a self,

He just said there is no self that separates us essentially from other people.

I don't know if Bob is still on.

This might be a separate conversation.

I think I'm getting a little bit of a question.

It's really talking more about what you're trying to do there as opposed to accept the world as it is in the way that the self-tidal consciousness is.

It is a different conversation and it's a very important one.

Buddhism is often times interpreted as being passive.

What it's basically saying is that it's really important to accept how things are because in fact that is how things are.

And then once we can accept how things are,

Then there's a next question about how do we respond to that.

So you can see that this is what the issue is.

If we can't see the issue,

We're going to be useless to fix it,

But if we accept it as it is and then look at what role we might have with that.

So this is actually talking about a kind of a root identity and this is where I want to push you a little bit to see how much you can allow that to expand out beyond the borders of this one personality and this one collection of thoughts and memories.

You want to try it?

Close your eyes for a minute.

And just relax.

You know when thoughts and images arise,

Gently sixar them.

And then send out peacefulness,

Well-being.

Let that radiate from you.

And now as you let it radiate from you,

Flow out with it.

So let your sense of self just expand out with that peace of well-being that you're sending out there.

So it's like what would it feel like to have the people around you within the boundaries of self?

And let it expand,

Just expand out further.

Softening,

Relaxing,

Letting go of the contracted self.

Any sense of boundary that you have,

Just kind of let it soften and just spread out.

The awareness looking through my eyes,

The awareness looking through your eyes,

The awareness going through your mind,

Going through my mind.

Same awareness,

Different perspectives,

Same awareness.

See if you can just soften the perspective and be with the awareness release.

Be the awareness,

Release this perspective.

N nets Terra Pradesh And as you open your eyes,

See how much you can keep that sense of expansiveness,

Even as you come back into awareness of this particular room and this particular body.

Comments,

What do you notice?

It is very soft.

What else happened for you?

Yeah,

It is an understanding,

It is not limited to the intellect.

Yeah.

And so part of what is tricky about that is you can feel all that and at least as I look at it there can be a place that is trying to figure out which one is right,

But remember it is just with the integral in itself,

It is the capacity to be in multiple places at once.

So it is allowing the individual organism to be there and this larger awareness at the same time without making a mutual exclusive,

That is part of the whole trick of it.

So how do you tangibly make use of this in your meditation?

We will go pluralistic here,

Just some ideas.

Pardon?

Back to work?

Yeah.

What I understand is that there are instructions on not so to be which is,

When is it skillful to have a self and when is it skillful to not have a self?

And this feels like another way of finding,

Not lasting happiness in your being.

Sometimes by using a sense of self,

Sometimes by using a sense of not self.

Yes.

And I am asking this specifically about meditation because in meditation we are not necessarily out marching in the war,

But sometimes we might be.

And so it is like what is it that we can develop here that is useful and part of it is as you say having that sense of being part of it.

And then when you are out there,

Again the foundation of this starts with the integral of being able to see whole bunches of different ways of going.

And when you come up to,

You know,

Talking to somebody who is mythic literal,

You don't necessarily start talking about the cosmic Christ.

Probably not.

But you can be the cosmic Christ and you can also,

How can I say this,

You can talk about tangible issues like ecology and if somebody is really,

Truly mythic literal,

You don't necessarily start off with a bunch of arguments about how to protect the people around the world,

But you look at what they interpret as their self-interest and being really honest and honoring about it,

Talking about what is the advantage for you in this.

So you can talk to multiple people in multiple places without getting hooked into any one of them.

And I would suggest that if there is anything that is going to save the world,

It is actually that capacity.

Right,

So we could actually do lots and lots on that,

But what I am looking at as a group of meditators is what is it that we can do.

So for example,

Jean Houston has a thing of the head,

The hand and the heart,

Or the hand goes the hand,

The head and the heart.

So if you want to engage the world,

There are these three areas of engagement.

There is the hand which is like staunching the wounds,

Trying to stop the damage,

You know,

Regulation,

All kinds of very tangible steps.

In order to figure out what to do there,

Well,

Okay,

So if all we do is stop the damage,

Which is really important because there is so much of it,

It is not going to help because there is so much damage being done.

So at some point it is not only doing that work,

But thinking about alternative systems and what is the way of thinking that keeps doing this damage so we can work with alternative systems across the board,

Alternative economic systems,

You know,

Farmer's market,

All kinds of stuff.

However,

The alternative systems that we can come up with are going to be limited by our consciousness so that is the work of the heart and that is the deeper meditation.

And what she says,

And I love it,

Is she says,

Everybody should be involved in all three of these areas and the percentages may vary over time.

You know,

Sometimes you may be,

You know,

90% engagement,

You know,

Direct engagement,

Staunching the wounds,

And 5% alternative systems and 5% meditation.

Other times you just may go out in the wilderness and spend long stretches of time to actually commune with all of it to come back,

But just to keep a little bit alive in each of them.

Yeah,

No,

That's very important.

Very important and that's part of understanding how different people think and what's valuable in that and where your own consciousness is with that.

I don't think tonight we're going to get into speculating about that.

That's a huge piece.

So I do want to come back to how do you incorporate this in really tangible ways.

I think I'll get into life and the differences.

I meet myself in another form.

But then I think of Jordan trying to organize all the diets for everyone who eats differently on the course.

It's like,

How do you do it?

It's good to have differences but somehow you have to be manageable.

One of the characteristics of integral thinking,

By the way,

Is that it comes back to the practical.

The postmodern can really,

I gave the example of singing Kumbaya when the bell even burns down.

Integral is much less dogmatic and just keeps looking very practically at what can be done next,

At the same time holding this larger sense of all these different systems.

That's part of what Jordan does so well,

Is look at all these different systems,

All these various needs and then giving the practical physical limitations,

What is it we can do and just optimizing that.

There are spiritual groups in the Bay of God.

Terry Patton's integral practice is very intimate and Sloban is the next enlightened person who is going to be a group which is a very interesting kind of view.

I think what is interesting is that in doing this practice now for a long time I recognize that I'm related to everybody in the world and because there is a relationship there is a responsibility and I go hand in hand.

There was this preacher years ago called Reverend and he did a sermon called I need no one but me.

In that regard I really saw for the first time how he was thinking but in this practice I realized that it is only distance that separates us and me but our essential qualities as humans and not just humans,

This goes for all living beings that we have a direct relationship and not a distant relationship.

When we drive down the highway and you get to a four-way stop you don't know any of the other people that are on that four-way stop but somebody is always going to go you go or you go or like there is this community of things and we all are online now.

So today I was talking with people all over the world in email and we all have the common interest and that is to be happy,

To be safe,

To be healthy and to I forgot the fourth one.

It was really important we did too.

No that's okay.

But I see we are related and so instead of alienated and that was the commonality of all those other systems except for the pluralism there were alienated but I think we need to extend it beyond the human form because that's the problem and that's the greater environment.

The environment are the trees,

The fish,

The animals and we haven't kept them into the equation and I think the third tier looks at that and says we all have to live together if we are going to survive because without it.

And what happens in third tier is it's not about those people out there but you look at the prison guard and you see the place inside you that can get that place.

Working as a therapist and a minister I knew particularly as a therapist when somebody came to me for help I had a couple of pedophiles that if I couldn't see the goodness and the light in them I was not going to be able to help.

And I could see and I could actually empathize with what's going on and once I can do that then I might come around on a practical level and say look we have to figure out ways to stop this behavior or whatever but if I can really hold them in my heart at the same time then I'm going to be vastly more effective.

So Kabir has this thing where he says don't ever put anybody out of your heart,

Yell at them,

Scream at them,

Throw them out of the house but don't put them out of your heart.

So in terms of an inward practice it's even looking at where your heart stops to include somebody and see if there's a way that you can actually see beyond that.

And at the same time still on a practical level if somebody is abusing a child maybe step in but you're not doing it because they're a bad person.

I think the way you said it at first I found it difficult and utterly I agree with what Jordan said in terms of we are this living organism and the idea of gale being in that,

The gale thing,

It doesn't seem,

It's just a convention.

Yeah,

It's totally not needed and not relevant and not part of it.

I mean it's like a body,

You know something.

It's not a responsibility,

It's not a thing to do.

Responsibility has a moral change to it.

No,

You were repeating what others were,

I was just seeing where her rejection came from.

We are part of all of it,

That doesn't mean that we are not part of all of it and don't take care of ourselves.

But it's with that.

Our son,

The ecologist,

He says that a hive of bees,

Maybe I said this before,

Is really one organism in many bodies and that's much closer to what we are.

So we may have separate bodies but we're actually one organism.

It's just a conceptual way.

That's what I said,

It's not helpful in terms of action but it's just that's how it is.

Yeah,

So let me say a couple things because I think there's a whole area that we just can't do any justice.

It's actually translated as to how we act out there and I think there's lots of people who are talking about that.

What I'm seeing is how we can actually deepen this in our practice.

So for example,

One thing is in the fifth jhana,

Is the maximum expansion and there is the sense in that of this ongoing expansion.

And so there's just a little bit more to do was to let your sense of self expand out with it.

You just take that feeling and follow it out.

Another thing that I do a lot when I think of it is even walking around and I just sort of watch.

I'm like,

Here I am here and what would it be like to have myself out amongst all these people?

And I can feel it and something just lightens up immediately.

So you can just play with that as you go around because if it's not that far away from you to just kind of nudge it out there a little bit.

When you sit down to practice,

To meditate,

As you start you can actually begin with this sense of actually spreading out.

What I find that's really amazing when I do that is I didn't even realize that when I was sitting down to meditate before,

I was actually kind of contained in this one place.

It's just so habitual and so it's just,

Imagine spreading out.

It's right effort.

It's right effort.

It's very gentle.

It's very gentle.

Right.

It's you allow.

Yeah,

Once you start pushing it out then there's some small person here pushing something.

It's that allow because it does feel a lot of times that it actually takes some effort to stay contained.

Right.

It takes some effort to stay contained.

Right.

There's a little bit of tension in keeping a cell.

Right.

Yeah,

And so part of it,

So I'm just talking about where it works for me,

But I can see as you're talking about it,

That for me as I let it go out a little bit,

Then I see that container.

And there may be other people who frankly kind of see the container first and just allow it to soften from there.

So there's lots of different styles and ways of going at it.

Could this be integrated into,

It seems like this could easily be integrated into another practice.

Yeah.

So as you are sending,

You know the language,

Are radiating to not be a you,

But there's just radiating and even let your identity go out with that.

And just working with all this lightly,

Just working with all this lightly and see where it resonates for you.

One thing that I would,

Actually a couple things,

I'm just checking my notes here.

If you are really concerned with moving up in the stages of consciousness like you know towards integral transcendence,

The research on it,

If you know what your stage of consciousness is,

You know what the next one is,

And you're willing to work hard to get there,

It takes about a minimum of about five years.

Because it's such a reorganizing what's going on.

One of the things that will help speed that up is actually meditation.

Because what happens in meditation,

You are actually letting your consciousness structures soften and dissolve,

And then they come back together when you get up,

They soften and dissolve and come back together.

And as you get used to that coming apart and coming back together,

It gets to be a more comfortable place.

So there's actually less resistance,

You know,

To allowing things to organize in a different way.

So meditation practice of any kind that really has that expansive quality is really helpful for this and quite frankly is helpful for the planet.

It's not sufficient but it may be necessary at some point if I can pick up your language from the other day.

The process of loosening this stuff up is not always going to be smooth.

Because I think we as organisms don't easily put on that armor.

Don't easily put on that armor,

The sort of tightening up inside,

And so this is a way that actually smooths a lot of it,

Opens up really quickly and can expose a lot of things.

So just to know that if there are some surprises,

And then use all the skills and stuff that you are cultivating here to work with us.

But don't expect it to necessarily be Disneyland all the way.

Because if there weren't some difficulties in there,

We would have been out there already.

Okay,

Anything,

I have a little journal entry I wanted to close with.

One thing that is when we kind of get on the frontier of newness.

There's always a kind of a,

The inner voice that says,

Well check this.

Is it safe,

Is it productive,

Is it,

Is this,

And then of course you can confirm it and go,

Oh yeah this is really great,

This is cool.

But it also happens in the greater sort of world,

In the group,

In the peer group,

In the world.

We kind of see that reaction happening in the world today.

The book Future Shock,

Was that Eric Fromm wrote that?

No,

No it was.

It was a mix of something.

Yeah,

But it talks about societies and pieces of societies that are not entitled to reacting to this.

So I think we always,

As we're doing it,

We always have to feel that we're entitled to at least look and see.

In the sense we're entitling ourselves to do it and giving ourselves a kind of a permission to look over the horizon and to see what pieces fit.

Yeah,

So I think what you're talking about is a very common thing.

It's a fear in the sense of almost anything new.

And you know as well as this expansiveness.

And this is a deal I make with myself when I'm doing this,

Is that I'm going to sort of let go of some of those guards and protectors and I promise them I'm not going to do anything drastic until I've consulted them.

Right?

So you can comfort them and you can allow yourself to expand out and then see what it likes and then before you actually do anything you come back and you bring in some of your normal awareness and stuff and say,

You know,

Is this going to work?

Otherwise you get just tied up in this is it okay and it's really helpful to just find some ways to expand out there that are not necessarily putting yourself at risk.

And then the other thing I like to do with people that's kind of fun,

Certainly there's a therapist,

You know,

You get people out there,

You know,

Do something that's really scary and expansive,

Etc.

And they come back.

So at that point I say,

Okay,

Let's take a close look and see what the damage was.

Because the next time you do it the fear is always there's going to be great damage and the fact that it wasn't the last time,

We miss that.

So it's like each time you expand out a little bit,

Come back and just check.

So fear has a theory about what's going on so you get some data that says,

Well,

Maybe you'll get damaged next time but there's all these times that it wasn't there so you can begin to deal with those fears on their own terms.

Because their heart's in the right place,

Oh my goodness,

It really is.

They're just over enthusiastic sometimes.

But we also,

In the relative world,

We all need borders,

We all need skin and we just be Bob's protoplasm on the floor.

Okay,

Anything more?

I want to thank you for your bravery in going to this area because it's obviously on the edge and it's leading edge of your thought and our thought and it does embody concerns that I'm sure everybody has.

But also I think maybe a prediction that might come out of that is if there are attention paid to this then it may be that the actual internal dynamics within the Sangha itself become more loving,

More kind,

Easy and more fluent as a result of people actually doing that on a medium scale as well as on the super large scale or the small scale.

Thank you.

June 2009.

I was walking through the woodland along the American River when two snakes reared up out of the grass about eight feet from me.

They were at least four feet long.

The exposed creamy underbelly gave little hint as to species but the triangular head suggested venom.

They were not within striking distance so I watched fascinated.

After a few moments,

I saw the back of one with a diamond pattern and a tail with a rattle.

Rattlesnakes are usually shy of humans so this puzzled me.

I wonder if they were fighting with each other.

But as I watched their emotions seemed more affectionate than combative.

They wound around each other and fell back into the grass and rose up again and wound around each other.

I smiled softly.

They're making love,

I thought.

They're too distracted to notice I'm here.

I'm not particularly scared of snakes but I had never felt so warmly towards two rattlesnakes in the wild so close to me.

Snakes and humans and all sentient beings feel urges that lead them to generating life.

I don't know what snakes feel but I felt a commonality with them that made me smile.

After a while,

I moved on.

There were lots of butterflies out that day,

Black ones with white spots.

I didn't know their name but that's fine because they didn't either.

I passed one on the ground on the edge of the path.

He fluttered his wings without rising in the air,

Just moving through the dust a few inches.

I turned back to take a closer look.

His wings were dusty and ragged.

Near the end of your life cycle,

I whispered to him.

I wanted to reach down and touch him to see if he could take flight.

But I couldn't imagine a big fleshy finger descending from the sky would be a pleasant experience for a butterfly.

So I just observed.

His wings moved slowly with his breathing.

Butterflies don't live very long.

But from their perspective,

They live full lives.

From their perspective,

Humans are ancient creatures who live near eternity.

One day,

I,

Like the butterfly,

Will be near the end of my cycle.

I'm past the middle of mine,

Probably,

And not too near the end,

Hopefully.

I wasn't trying to empathize with the butterfly.

How could I know what it feels?

But I knew that eventually life ebbs from both of us,

And this we are the same.

I walked down the path,

Leaving the butterfly to die in peace.

The urge that starts new life,

The ebbing of life.

As I gazed at the green woods and the meadows around me,

I felt touched to be a part of it all.

My eyes were moist.

I think Nietzsche,

In a rare soft moment,

Said,

Suffering is complex,

But happiness is simple.

Walking through the fields,

I felt simple.

I felt ordinary.

I felt blessed.

May we all feel the life force that flows through all of us.

May we let ourselves be touched in very simple ways by those around us.

May the way we live our lives internally and externally be a way of sending out to all beings this simple wish that all of us live in peace,

That all of us live with delight,

That all of us know kindness.

May all of us know the soft expanse of freedom,

Which is all of us,

All of us together as one awareness.

May it be so.

Blessed be.

.

Reviews

Such beautiful thoughts. Sadhu sadhu sadhu

Thank you 🙏

i appreciated so much listening your talk! 🙌🏻☺️