Suññata and the Four Elements: Space

This is a talk given by Lloyd to the Insight Community of Denver, Colorado on Suññata and the Four Elements. This talk focuses on the topic of space and expanding into different realms. Please note this is recorded live with some background noise.

Transcript

I think what I'd like to begin with this evening,

Given that many of you,

Whether you've just begun to sit recently or have been at it for a long time,

Are pretty well schooled in the practice and the approach of mindfulness meditation,

The meditation practice.

And over the course of the last couple of months,

We've been really focusing a lot on grounding ourselves in the body,

Knowing the body as body,

Knowing it as being not separate from all else that creation is comprised of.

And this practice tonight that we did was actually quite different.

And it was all about expanding beyond that grounding into very different realms of states of consciousness.

And so before talking about these things,

I'd like to spend just a little time reflecting together on what the nature of your experience was in doing this practice.

When Joseph teaches at Inside Meditation Society in elsewhere,

He said some people find it really rather helpful,

As the Buddha intended for relaxing into the grand,

Spacious,

Emptiness within which all occurs,

Instead of the people finding it kind of annoying.

So I'd be interested in any experiences you may have had here,

Sort of of both kinds.

So please,

If you have anything you'd like to share about the meditation that we did,

Then please,

Now is a good time to bring it up.

Please.

I thought it was very useful.

It gave me kind of a new way of exploring the whole concept of dissolving into the vast darkness.

And yet,

So,

And I also discovered,

And this was the interesting part,

A very strong sense of holding in the middle of it all.

As I just sort of relaxed and went a bit and relaxed,

I was like,

I felt the getting's back,

What is that,

From the free-holding that I had?

And it was really a tightness of holding on.

That's actually a fairly common experience in doing this.

Because what you really are doing is kind of vivisecting your own consciousness.

You know,

It's like,

In the Wheel of Samsara,

The illustrations of the Wheel of Samsara,

You look,

Nama Rupa,

The name and form,

The illustration for that is two men and a boat.

And it is,

You know,

And they are emblematic of the body and consciousness,

That they inhabit the same vehicle.

They're not different,

But they're not the same.

And what's going on here is that you're inviting the mind to let go of the body.

You know,

To simply turn the attention elsewhere from the experience of the body's body,

To turn the attention elsewhere from the experience of the discursive mind creating the self,

And simply relaxing the consciousness and allowing it to expand outward in all directions.

So all that we're really doing is becoming aware of a vast space within which these various phenomena arise.

And as it begins to have that effect,

It turns out that it's not really the discursive mind's idea of a good time.

And it says,

Oh,

This is all very well good,

But you know,

We're just not getting carried away here.

And so that's basically kind of what's going on.

There's a certain element of fear,

You know,

What if I really do let go?

What's going to happen to me?

And so,

You know,

It's a normal reaction and I appreciate it for you to bring it up.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Please.

Yeah,

It was actually,

I like the word she used,

Dissolving.

It captures that sense.

It was the first time I was able to not be so fearful or anxious about something that's coming up,

This very body specific treatment thing,

And I could finally let go of that and be in this much wider space.

And it was really sweet,

Actually.

Yes.

And the noises,

The interruptions that were coming were actually just a way of reminding me that I wasn't thinking about all the other stuff that I've been thinking about.

And it just brought me back to,

Oh,

I was in a blank place.

I was in that just starting style space.

Anyway,

It was making me feel good.

Thank you.

There's a highly revered Tibetan meditation teacher from a generation or so ago,

Tulku Gurgen,

Who is the father of Sotini Rinpoche and Nintri Dorje,

Who teach Dzogchen practice in the West.

And back then he was leading retreats on the exploration of these states of consciousness that are both very deep and extraordinarily expansive.

And so there were these Western students,

You know,

Some pretty senior people,

Who come to sit with him to receive these teachings there in his monastery in Tibet.

And at the same time they were there,

He was having a lot of renovation work done on the monastery.

And so a couple of rooms down the hall when he started the retreat,

There were people with jackhammers,

And they were blasting through the foundation,

They were cutting holes in the walls,

And there was dust everywhere,

And just incredible racket.

And so he started the retreat and people started,

You know,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah.

And it was just intolerable for these students,

You know.

And so very shortly into the retreat they were saying,

Why did you schedule this retreat,

You know,

During this period of time when the noise is intolerable and the distractions are overwhelming?

And he said,

What noise?

He said,

You simply have not finished allowing the mind to expand sufficiently to take this in.

The Buddha,

A couple of guided meditations that he did were with his kind of wingman Ananda,

And his attendant and whatnot.

And there are these two discourses,

121 and 122 in the middle-length discourses of the Buddha,

The shorter and greater discourses on voidness,

Pula-Shyamata.

And so the Ananda says,

You know,

It seems to me that some of the time your consciousness abides in voidness.

Is this so?

And the Buddha said,

Yes it is.

And he basically asked him,

You know,

How do you attain this state of mind that has become empty of all phenomena?

That simply resides in the limitless emptiness of the big mind,

The unsurpassed mind as it's called in one of the sutras.

And he said,

I do it by this means.

He said,

If you want to do this practice and experience this voidness,

You can't do it in a place where it's really busy and there's a lot of social contact with others.

He said,

I invite you to look about us at our environment.

What do you see?

You see people moving about and working in shops and trading goods and engaged in the affairs of the day and the structures in which they all do this.

And he said,

Normally what happens on a day-to-day basis is that that's where our consciousness is focused,

On the immediate environment and the human activity around us and the structures we build in order to conduct these activities.

Basically what he did was kind of a gestalt exercise with Ananda.

He said,

I invite you to focus not on these things that are immediately around and immediately before us.

I invite you instead to focus on what is around them,

So to kind of turn the attention away from the immediate and the built environment and all human activity.

And instead focus on the greenery around us,

On the trees and the bushes and the forest,

And the water and all the streams and whatnot.

So allow the mind's kind of default inclination just to focus on human activity,

To fade into the background,

Focus instead on the natural world that makes all this activity possible.

So expand your consciousness beyond the immediacy of the human activity and the human interaction and instead focus on this vast green environment that sustains the life of all beings that makes it possible for us to do these things.

So he does that for a while.

Focusing on the richness and the vastness of the green environment.

So his mind gets settled into that perspective,

That view.

So he's moved beyond the view characterized by human activity and human interaction.

So he just hasn't reside in that understanding for a while.

And he said,

Now I want you to shift your focus from the green world,

From the forests and the bushes and the growth and the wildlife and whatever,

Instead to the earth that makes possible this green life.

So he has to do this kind of figure-ground shift again.

And to focus instead on the mountains.

And again,

His consciousness is moving outward,

Like through concentric circles.

And focus instead on the mountains,

On the vastness that they represent as you see them.

They're going from this little circle of human activity in the built environment to the green world that sustains life,

To the earth itself that sustains green life,

That makes all life possible in the first place.

So focusing on the earth.

So he does that.

Living in a place like we do in Colorado is pretty easy to do,

Isn't it?

You go out just about anywhere,

Whoa,

Look at that,

Vast open space.

And so he had his mind reside there for a certain period of time.

And he said,

Now I want you to do this,

Once again to reverse figure-ground.

Instead of focusing on the mountains and the earth,

I want you to instead let that fade into the background and focus instead on the sky,

On the vastness of the sky.

And not just to focus on it,

But to allow your mind to move into it.

So in each one of these,

He said,

Allow the mind to move beyond the earth environment and human activity,

Allow the mind to move into oneness,

Intuitive connection with green life.

Then allow the mind to move from that into intuitive connection with the earth that makes life possible.

And now he's saying,

Allow the mind to extend beyond the taking in of the vastness of the mountains and the earth.

Allow the mind,

Allow the consciousness to extend,

To radiate out into the sky and into space itself.

And experience the limitlessness and the emptiness of that reality in an intuitive way.

So that's the nature of the guided meditation at the Buddha-Tava Nanda for having some kind of encouraging,

Some intuitive sense of what it means to allow the mind to relax into the vastness of space and to become on with it.

And he said,

If you can do that,

If you can allow the mind to go to those spaces,

He said,

That's in some ways,

It's a trip that never ends.

The mind will simply continue to expand into this great vastness.

And then you've also transcended any notion of self.

And one becomes aware that this is a vastness that we all share.

It's all together in the person.

It is our kind of expanding outward in some ways,

And the Tibetans talk about this a lot.

That's actually what the consciousness is doing when you do this kind of practice.

It wants to move into that vastness because it has this intuitive sense that basically what the consciousness is doing is coming home.

Like birds that fly out from their place of birth and go six or eight thousand miles or something,

And then they come back to their place of birth.

He's saying this understanding is that our consciousness was not just born when our folks got it on.

That the consciousness was implanted at that point in time.

But that it came from the void,

And to the void it returns.

And in fact,

When the Buddha,

Among the Buddha's dying words,

And now I return,

Letting go into that void to not return.

And so this is the ability to get a flavor for and understanding of what it means to simply free the consciousness,

To unlock the cell door,

Unlock it from the shell or the confines of self,

And re-emerge and reunite with that vast emptiness from which we all came in the first place.

So that's what those meditations that he taught in the Surya and Greater Discourse on Voidness are all about.

It's how to free the consciousness,

To do what it naturally wants to do.

Like a bird returning and completing its migration,

Coming back home to the place of birth.

And so that's the nature of the experience that he was seeking to convey.

And he said,

When you can do this practice and you can allow this to happen over and over again.

He didn't call it death practice exactly,

But what he was intimating is that letting go at its most fundamental is all about.

Is just allowing the consciousness to expand into limitless space.

And the Dzogchen teachers like Minshu Dorji and Sopamitra Shevofa,

Whom I've done some practice with,

When we were practicing down at Taramanghala,

Which is a retreat center in the mountains south of Pagosa Springs,

What they would do in the evening at sunset is they'd lead us out there with our cushions and such to sit on the hillside.

And do this practice as we watched the sunset.

And the sunset itself,

In this part of the world,

Can be so entrancing.

You're sitting there and you're seeing the trees and you're seeing the earth,

You're seeing the mountains.

And then it's like the senses and the consciousness are just drawn into the sky.

And you can kind of feel,

Almost literally feel the consciousness expanding into the sky.

Until you kind of become the sunset.

Which is a useful thing in part because what you're looking at is a nitya and a nata.

You're looking at a sunset if there's a few clouds or something.

It's absolutely beautiful.

It can be quite stunning.

It's also absolutely unsubstantial.

The only constant has changed.

The shapes of the clouds change and the colors change.

And the whole environment is sort of in flux.

And those are clouds.

Those are real clouds,

Right?

And all of a sudden,

They're gone.

Ceaseless change,

Insubstantiality that the consciousness is kind of drawn into.

So it can be a lovely practice to do.

I encourage it highly.

Never find yourself outside in your life or this sort of thing.

So that was probably the most notable.

The exposition on the elephants is another place where the teacher is the importance of allowing the mind to relax into these spacious states.

Also in his teaching on the meditative absorptions.

These kind of deep states of samadhi that allow alternative states of consciousness to arise.

He used a lot of imagery there that touched on space as well.

He said,

For moving into the mind state of deep,

Kind of sweet selfless joy combined with calmness.

Imagine a vast lake.

And in this lake,

You find these lily pads floating.

And elsewhere in the lake,

The wind may be blowing.

There may be artesian wells that are bubbling up from the floor of the lake and disturbing them.

But here,

In this part of the lake,

The water is still.

Your mind floats just below the surface.

Floating in peace.

Abiding in peace.

Abiding in a still open state.

Where there are no wants and needs and there are no fears.

The mind is unaffected by fear and longing,

As the Buddha said.

It simply rests or floats in its natural state.

So these teachings,

These words,

These images are really rather core to the Buddhist teachings.

Except they're not featured a great deal in a lot of Buddha Dharma,

Sharing of the Dharma.

In part because they're kind of mystical,

Among other things.

They're extra rational in nature.

Also,

As was pointed out earlier,

Engaging in these practices and getting this flavor for the openness and the lemlessness,

Can be challenging.

And it needs to be done with care.

It needs to be done with kindness.

And should you find yourself experimenting with one of these practices,

You know,

The expansion of the consciousness,

Moving out in all directions,

Or the vast night sky and seeing all phenomena,

Strengthening stars within it.

And you find that sense of uneasiness or knowing let go,

You know,

It's worth respecting.

Because what you're doing literally is pushing the boundaries.

You're kind of experimenting or playing with letting go,

Letting go who you think we are,

Relaxing into the environment.

And that's part of what the Four Elements is about,

Right?

Is getting in touch with the earth element within,

Getting in touch with the water element,

With the air element,

With the fire element.

And then this transition is about getting well grounded in the body,

Right?

And then this transition is letting go of all that and allowing the consciousness to expand beyond that into realms that require a certain amount of courage and grace to enter into.

Because they are in fact departures from the comfortable space of the constructed self.

But to the extent that you find yourself with the opportunity,

It happens especially on retreat,

But if you have a steady practice going at home and you have the opportunity to spend a prolonged period of time now or so,

Some time to just do a practice similar to this.

And if you just go on the internet and Google Joseph Goldstein,

Big Mind Meditation or Big Sky Meditation,

It's right there.

And you can just sit in meditation and listen to Joseph do that guided meditation and you'll go,

Quite a powerful experience.

You'll be surprised.

Okay,

So questions,

Observations,

Please.

Repeat the names of the discourses,

The Greater and Lesser Discourses on,

Is it consciousness?

On voidness.

On voidness.

Yeah,

121,

122,

The Kulyasanātā,

121.

The Exposition on the Elements.

So I think that's 141 or 144,

They're all in the Majjhima Nikāyat.

Okay.

But,

Yeah.

Okay.

Please.

I love the imagery of the sky as opposed to the land because it seems that we have to do something to get to those open spaces,

Whereas all we have to do in the sky is to look up and the sky is free.

There it is.

Yes,

And you know,

If you,

Whether you're looking at a sunset or you go to someplace like the Grand Canyon or something,

You know,

You can feel the consciousness just being drawn,

Drawn outward into that vastness.

We go to the Grand Canyon if we're at Mount when we can and so that's certainly always my experience.

Sometimes if I see a soaring bird,

I kind of focus on that a little bit and feel it's almost like,

You know,

Like it's a kind of a drone or something and my consciousness is along the ride and I can just see this vast space,

You know,

From the eyes of the raptor that's soaring over.

And we can see that wherever we can.

Of course.

The sky is there and it's as vast no matter where we are.

Quite so,

Quite so.

An Ojibwe saying,

And I'm fond of,

I know some of you have heard me say before,

Is that sometimes I go about lost in self-pity,

But all the while the wind is moving me across a great sky.

Same feeling.

Whatever's going on in our lives,

You know,

Whether it's the pleasant or the unpleasant or the neutral or whatnot,

It is in fact taking place within this vast space,

You know.

And a greater discourse on the establishing of mindfulness in the Mahasatipatthana Sutta,

And being mindful of the mind,

You know,

That Buddha talks about,

The meditator knows the contracted mind to be the contracted mind.

He knows the expanded mind to be the expanded mind,

And that's the one imbued with the brahmaviharas,

You know,

Compassion and selfless joy,

Equanimity,

Love.

And he also says on there he knows the unsurpassed mind to be the unsurpassed mind.

And that's what he's talking about there.

He's talking about the mind that has let go into the vastness of space.

I was reading a book of daily affirmations,

And one was this old learned rabbi and a student,

And this student was asking him,

So when you die,

Rabbi,

And you meet God,

Are you going to,

Has God going to ask you,

Or are you more holy?

And he says,

And the rabbi's name was Zusa or something like that,

And he said,

He's going to ask me why I wasn't more Zusa.

And in light of that,

Can you talk about what selfless joy is?

Because in my tradition,

Jungian,

You know,

Contemplative tradition,

We're trying to find our true self,

You know,

The person that God created us to be.

So could you talk a little bit more about what I mean with selfless joy?

Yes,

Yes,

Of course.

There are actually four kinds of joy that the Buddha talked about off and on during his teachings.

One is what's called kamoja,

And what that means is joy dependent on external circumstances.

Being at your,

You know,

One of your kids' wedding ceremonies or something like that,

You know,

An occasion of great joy that makes you really happy.

Getting something you wanted,

Somebody giving you a present that you hadn't been expecting and didn't know you wanted until you got it,

And then it made you really happy.

Okay.

That's kamoja.

It's likened to a breeze blowing over the surface of the lake,

The water.

There's this joy called sukha,

And sukha is selfless joy.

Sukha is,

And the image that the Buddha uses for it is a mountain lake that's fed not by external flows,

But instead by artesian well,

Which is a well under pressure at the bottom of the lake that's bubbling up.

And in fact that image is used for both sukha and another form of joy the Buddha talked about,

Which is pithi,

Which is usually translated actually as rapture,

And that is when the body,

When you're sitting in meditation,

This body is very deep and the mind stops creating self.

Sometimes you can feel this rush of energy sort of moving up through the body,

And it's kind of a bioenergetic sensation,

This feeling of joy.

The selfless joy of sukha,

This welling up,

Is not dependent on external circumstances.

All that's going on when you experience sukha is that you're experiencing one of the side effects of the discursive mind's temporary taking a break from creating the self.

All the hindrances are suppressed.

And what that does basically,

When the mind is bubbly or relaxed in that way,

It's not fabricating the self,

Is that it spontaneously liberates a fair amount of joy.

And you feel happy,

You just feel kind of leavened and at ease and at peace with things exactly as they are.

Fourth kind of joy is mudita.

And what that means is that it's the selfless joy that wants to be shared.

It's taking delight in the happiness that you see others experiencing.

And wishing that they be happy in the same way that you are.

So when we say selfless joy,

It's not the happiness that comes from,

It's not what they would sometimes call sort of businessmen's happiness.

It's like,

I'll make you happy if you make me happy.

A lot of relationships kind of go in a ditch because of that one.

Hey,

You're not making me happy anymore.

And so sukha,

Shared,

Is mudita.

It's simply this feeling of happiness and well-being within and wanting others to feel the same.

Or if we see that they are feeling that you're made happy by that rather than feeling envious.

So it's happiness in the absence of self.

And it is one of the kind of constituents of the Ramabaras.

Which in fact are,

When the Buddha talked about the expanded mind,

That's what he's talking about.

When you find the consciousness imbued with compassion and selfless joy,

The joy,

The altruistic joy,

It's also called equanimity,

Compassion.

That those comprise the guidance system that replaces self.

When the discursive mind is in a band and these other qualities of mind are coming to the fore,

Then your motives for speaking and acting and whatnot are guided by those states of mind instead of being guided from a self-protective state.

And so the Ramabaras also help prepare the mind for the experience of expanding into space as well.

They're kind of related to each other.

So we're talking about ideas and concepts,

Right?

And the meditation that we use to kind of get a little taste for what that's about,

They're all words and concepts and ideas.

But what they're trying to do is to get at the nature of a kind of experience that's available to you,

You know,

If you allow the mind to settle into it.

And so again,

If you have a longer than average period of time available for you to sit,

Doing something like this meditation can be a real gift to the self.

More often than not,

When you do it,

You'll find yourself feeling perhaps a little bit more equanimity and a little more peace of mind and a little bit more of a tendency to just not take the whole thing quite so seriously.

It's just all happening in this great,

Vast arena,

You know,

And we abide with it as we can,

You know.

We respond skillfully when we see things coming along that look like they need responding to.

Other than that,

You know,

We allow things to be as they are.

Well,

Can you remind us what discursive mind is,

Just briefly,

Discursive mind?

When I use that phrase,

I mean sort of storytelling mind,

You know,

The mind that's in the constant process of telling us who we are,

Of conjuring self.

Okay,

This is who I am,

This is my social security network,

This is my job,

These are my degrees,

You know,

Here's my resume,

You know,

Here's where I live,

Here's what kind of car I drive,

Here's what I like and what I don't like and what I don't care about,

And all that stuff,

You know.

And it,

For most of us actually,

You know,

And this includes going back to the Buddha's time,

That's the mind's default option,

Right.

We just kind of scurry around,

The Buddha called it I-making and me-making,

You know,

Self-thing.

So then you're synonymous with persona,

Not quite?

Not altogether,

I think that word actually captures a lot more,

You know.

As is understood in Buddha Dharma,

I-making and me-making,

The way the Buddha described it,

Is simply a sequence of mental processes.

It's just something the mind does.

And so a lot of,

You know,

The maturation meditation practice is first coming to the realization that that's what the mind's doing.

Oh,

Okay,

Here I am self-thing,

Right.

But,

You know,

The really frustrating thing about it is that we get to the point where we readily recognize it,

But we still can't stop doing it,

You know.

And Ajahn Chah,

The Thai forest meditation master,

Said,

Well,

That's one of the real frustrations of this practice,

Is that we get increasingly attuned to what the mind is up to.

But the tendencies of mind are so strong that in some cases all we can do is to continue to watch it doing it until it runs its course,

And hopefully not speak or act too unskillfully in the meantime.

There's a,

Again,

I think it's from Shuan Buddhism,

An ancient Chinese story,

An anecdote about this very skilled young horseman who goes into the forest and he captures this really wild and powerful horse and he brings it back to the village and he starts training it,

Using all of his skill and whatnot.

And a few days later he's seen,

You know,

Galloping madly through the village at a breakneck pace and somebody calls out to him,

You know,

Where are you going in such a hurry?

And he shouts back,

I don't know,

Ask the horse.

Sometimes it just feels like we're riding this wild horse,

You know,

And it's going to rip along and go where it's going to go and hopefully not try to sweep you off the tree branch in the meantime.

After a while he gets tired and then we get back to the cushion and start again.

Please.

So a question came up for me when I was doing the Dhanan meditation.

This last week I was camping for three days in the mountains in a very isolated place.

And I think for the first time ever I felt at one,

I felt connection with where I was.

And as you were doing the guided meditation,

I think my mind was kind of trying to understand if there were parallels or,

In some ways it seemed to me as though being that connected to the environment is different than what you're talking about.

You're talking about being rid of all that maybe.

But I don't know,

It was a really wonderful feeling.

Yes,

Yes.

I knew I was myself.

I felt I was a part of this.

I think what we're basically speaking about is states of expanded consciousness.

I think that,

And I've had the kind of experience that you're talking about as well,

When there's just this sense of,

Okay,

I'm here,

I'm in this place of sanctuary,

Of refuge,

You know.

I can stop making up the self for a while.

And when you do that,

It's as if the environment is beckoning you,

You know.

Come forth and what it says in the Tibetan book of the Great Liberation,

I'm hearing in the Bhargava,

Step out of the small self,

This body of fear,

Rest and kindness and generosity are,

That it's where the consciousness wants to go.

And the sense of boundaries dissolves.

And there is no separation,

There is no difference,

You know.

As Robert and Jeff Bruce said in one of those poems,

Man of art,

You know,

To really experience the other lack of otherness between us and that which is around us.

And then this experience of space is simply moving beyond that sense of oneness with nature and the natural surroundings to oneness with the universe.

One is not sort of inherently superior to the other.

They're both states of elevated or expanded consciousness.

And they both have,

I mean,

They're both extremely powerful teachings as far as the nature of who we are and I think we are in terms of what the mind is capable of.

It's like we've been listening to AM Talk Radio all our lives now.

It turns out there's a lot of bandwidth out there that we haven't been able to tune into and that's basically all that's happening here is that the consciousness becomes capable of experiencing both the environment and the cosmos in ways that we have not before.

And that's all that Buddha is trying to indicate in these guided meditations that he teaches.

You know,

It's a big world out there and here's a way you can kind of start to tap into it all the time.

Thank you.

Anything else?

Yes,

Please.

I just wanted to ask you about your use of the friends,

The collective,

Your mind,

If you find your mind has collapsed around a story and I heard that collapse and I just didn't quite know how to handle it.

Sure,

Sure.

Many years ago I had a really,

Really serious bike accident and there is some suspicion that I might have a brain tumor and would need to have it operated on and then it was decided it wasn't a brain tumor.

It was this aneurysm that maybe going to blow out or that maybe it was going to reabsorb on its own.

And so they said,

Well,

You know,

We could do surgery but sometimes you have us trouble when you do the surgery or we could just let it see if it reabsorbs on its own and so I thought maybe it would go that route.

But in the process I was in communication with Dharma friends and what not and I had some really meaningful correspondence with Sheryl Saltzberg,

You know,

Friend and teacher.

And she talked about when she faced a similar situation when there is some suspicion that maybe she had ovarian cancer and they were doing some tests and they were getting ready to send her into surgery and she would say,

You know,

I knew there were all these friends of mine who were sending me meta and well wishes,

You know,

I was certainly doing it for myself and sometimes I could just be at peace and feel a certain amount of equanimity.

And then she said all of a sudden it felt like the mind contracted around the terror and the fear and that there was nothing else in her universe,

You know,

That the mind was infused with terror and fear and there was no space around it,

There was just that and nothing else.

And then she realized that was what was happening and then gradually it would open up again and she would feel the space get bigger,

You know,

That yes,

There is this potential for a life-threatening degree in disease,

You know,

In condition,

There is the Dharma,

There are my friends,

There is my practice,

I have that for myself,

The sun is shining,

The flowers are blooming and yes,

There is the fear,

You know.

And in Buddha Dharma,

And certainly in my experience,

Courage is not the absence of fear.

The absence of fear is fearlessness,

Courage rather is the being in the presence of fear with faith and equanimity,

Faith in yourself and faith in the universe,

You know,

I mean,

Things will turn out as they are going to turn out but you have faith in your ability to see yourself through it and you can face whatever happens with a certain sense of acceptance and peace of mind,

Right.

And so there can be the courage,

There can be the equanimity,

There can be the steadfastness,

All in the presence of the fear,

And the sun is shining and the flowers are blooming,

All these other things are going on as well,

That can be the ultimate value of being able to do a practice like this when it is possible to do.

When the mind contracts around the fear,

That is what is going on,

You know,

And the power of mindfulness is being able to see when that has happened,

You know.

You can experience terror,

You know,

You can feel panic,

You know,

The body gets,

The breath becomes short,

The body becomes,

You know,

Sweaty and what not.

And then that is followed by a moment of mindfulness,

You say,

Oh,

This is fear,

This is terror,

Okay.

And that moment of mindfulness,

You are not terrified.

In the moment of mindfulness,

You are,

You become aware of the fact that you were terrified a moment ago.

Because that is where your consciousness is now,

It is mindful of the fact that you were just afraid,

And you may be in the next minute,

You know,

And the one after that.

But to the extent,

You know,

It is like when you are watching digital television and your signal is not good,

You know,

All of a sudden it starts to break up and gets all dodgy and there is just little squares and what not.

What you are doing when you are practicing mindfulness is you are watching this terrible drama,

You know,

It is like a hospital soap opera,

You know,

And there is just terrific drama and all these things are going to happen,

It is going to be horrible.

But then all of a sudden when there is mindfulness,

It is like it breaks up the signal.

You know,

Oh yeah,

This is a really bad soap opera.

And the space expands around it,

You know.

It is why this practice is so powerful.

And then you can say,

Oh yeah,

This is a big field,

It really is terror and it is understandable.

And the sun is shining,

The clouds are blooming.

Isn't this terror and fear what our friend with the yellow head is trying to evoke?

It has been surmised that this may in fact be what is going on.

There is this whole circuitry in the brain,

You know,

The lumbic system,

The amygdala,

And it comes from a super primitive part of the brain,

One that is different from the prefrontal cortex,

The reason the logic takes place.

And to the extent you can keep people terrified,

It interferes with rational thought.

And so some local leaders down through history have found it very beneficial to keep people afraid,

Because when they are afraid,

They tend to revert to a child-like state of mind,

Where they look for a parent,

An authority figure,

To take over,

To make them safe.

So part of this kind of mind training is in fact one means of training yourself to not be so easily manipulated by those who would seek to influence thought like her.

It's true.

You mentioned faith,

And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that.

Yes.

Can you repeat the question?

The question was,

What about faith,

Sort of what role does it play in the Buddha-Nama?

And the Buddha distinguished in his discourses the law between faith and belief,

And he taught that to found your spiritual practice on beliefs,

You know,

It's a little like building houses on sand,

You know,

That if you decide that you're going to,

You know,

Put your law in with a certain spiritual leader or teacher,

Because all of your friends are,

Because he's really rich,

You know.

One of my Burmese teachers,

Sister Dipankara,

Said,

You know,

Whenever you teach the Dharma you must remember that many beings will come to listen to you.

Some you can see,

Some you cannot.

So,

Yeah,

He said to do a practice because your buddies are doing it,

Or because it's a wealthier,

Impressive person,

Or because of the charisma of the teachers,

And you know,

That melts away,

And you find yourself cynical,

And no matter how often you were before.

Faith,

You know,

He talked about different kinds of faith,

But basically when he was asked,

Well,

Why should he believe you more than we should anybody else?

And he basically said you shouldn't.

My,

The orientation of my teaching,

Teach one thing and one thing only,

Why is there suffering and how it can be brought to an end.

If that is likewise your goal,

If that's something you want to learn,

Then I recommend you experiment with these practices that I offer.

I recommend you experiment with the ideas I've put forth,

You know,

The reality of suffering,

The origins of suffering,

The cessation of suffering,

The means to bring it to an end,

A full path,

A means for doing so.

He said,

If your goal is my goal,

I recommend that you try these practices,

That you investigate these teachings.

If based on your own experience,

You find that they do help alleviate your suffering.

They do help you to begin to develop insights into a path to freedom.

And by all means you should do those practices and you should continue to study those teachings.

And as that happens,

You do the practice,

You do the teachings,

Whoa,

This stuff seems to work,

Okay.

Then what you have done is to verify the teachings and the practices with your own experience.

And it becomes reiterative,

It's kind of like eating bread dough,

Okay.

So you find yourself feeling kind of affirmed or finding yourself in alignment with what the Buddha taught.

You know,

I think this guy was onto something,

You know,

It seems to be working for me,

It seems to be having this artifact.

I think I want to learn more about this,

I think I want to study a little more deeply,

I think I want to practice a little more deeply and see if it continues to have that effect.

So you have this,

When you're setting out on a path,

He has what he calls bright faith.

And you say,

This stuff really may work and I'm willing to throw my lot in and see if it does.

And then if in fact you find that it's beneficial,

Then that affirms that faith,

You know,

And it becomes more and more well-founded.

And you're going to have hard times and there are going to be doubts that arise.

And either you'll decide this path isn't for you and you'll go off and do another one,

Or you'll work through the doubts.

And if in fact that happens,

Then you come back and the faith is probably stronger than it was before.

So it is essentially,

Rather than just believing a doctrine because somebody told you to,

It's knowing the truth of the doctrine in your own state of being.

Because you've lived it and haven't just heard the words.

It has in fact become your dharma.

It has in fact become the truth of your own being.

And that is,

And as a result of that kind of reiterative process,

Then the faith simply gets stronger and stronger over time.

And so it can be a really powerful companion to have when fear and anxiety arise.

Because you understand that fear and anxiety are simply in the nature of the mind to occur.

And the dharma is not going to make them go away.

It's not going to keep from happening.

What it can do is to fundamentally renegotiate our relationship with anxiety and fear when they do arise.

So if you're up against some kind of bad medical diagnosis or something like that,

Absolutely there's going to be fear.

Absolutely there's going to be kind of contracting with the mind.

And there's the dharma.

Okay,

This is fear.

I understand.

It's the fear-binding talk.

It's the nature of our being.

We don't want to die,

Even though there's a lot of evidence that eventually we're going to.

Could you recommend anybody to read more about that?

Sure.

Well,

Sharon Salzberg wrote a book,

The title of which is Faith.

Oh,

What is it?

I recommend it highly.

What's the name?

Faith.

That's the title of the book.

Faith,

Trusting Your Dearest Experience.

It's sometimes trusting your own dearest experience,

Which is what we were just talking about.

That's why I'm giving a talk on faith next Sunday.

Yay!

What a great segue into ending our time together here this evening.

If you'll please just for a moment take your sitting posture again while the eyes gently close.

The attention to come to rest on the training.

And thus shall you think of all this fleeting world,

A star at dawn,

A bubble in a stream,

A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,

A flickering lamp,

A phantom,

And a dream.

.

Reviews

Excellent conversation, I will try the exercise of expanding consciousness by looking at nature and beyond. Thank you

Thankyou, alway's interesting and informative 🙇💚🌺