The Sublime

Edmund Burke described the sublime as, “that peculiar mixture of awe and terror we feel when confronted with great forces of nature.” It's what many people expect—or at least hope for—when they sit down to meditate, and it’s one of the most glorious feeling human beings can experience. However, it’s neither the real purpose of mindfulness nor its most powerful feature—just a wonderful, encouraging and unpredictable by-product.

Transcript

Hello everybody and welcome to Mindfulness Live.

This week we're talking about the sublime.

Edmund Burke called the sublime that peculiar mixture of awe and terror that we feel when confronted with the great forces of nature.

That's a very strange combination,

Awe and terror,

And there's more to say about it too,

But it's clearly something that is not clear,

In the sense that you can't put your finger on it,

You can't make it happen,

You can't even really describe it,

You just know it when you feel it.

So that is one of the great gifts of mindfulness meditation,

One that's often taken for granted and one that I often.

.

.

I don't dismiss it,

But I'm always concerned to make sure that you understand that the real purpose of mindfulness,

The greatest value of mindfulness,

Is to let go of reactivity,

Because that's what enables us to change.

That this connection with the sublime,

You can call it enlightenment if you want,

Or the universe,

Or God,

Or that mystical thing is also available to us,

And it's very encouraging,

Even though in itself it doesn't have the same power to change us.

So we're going to look at that today,

So make yourselves comfortable,

Take a nice breath,

And let go.

Ahh.

.

.

And with the breath in your body,

Your attention comes in,

And everything starts to slow down,

And you feel the heaving of your chest,

The work of breathing,

Synchronization of many muscles,

And rhythms,

And you don't have to do anything,

Just feel.

Feel the breath pushing,

Pulling,

Pausing,

And feeling,

Noticing the difference between the in-breath and the out-breath,

The force required to breathe in,

And the release of breathing out.

So it's effort and relaxation,

Effort and relaxation,

One of the many rhythms of life,

Along with your heartbeats,

Your metabolism,

The passage of time,

And as you breathe quietly in the present moment,

All your senses are still working,

You're aware of sounds around you,

Those sensations within you.

You're aware of breathing and being here and now,

You're aware of being alive and conscious,

And awake,

Feeling all the sensation in your body,

Movement of the breath,

The feeling of breathing,

The passage of air,

Your nose,

Your throat,

Your chest,

Feeling the strength into your body,

And leave it,

Rising and falling,

And breath comes and goes,

The moments come and go,

And you are here and now with your body,

Your mind,

Your feelings and thoughts,

With your moves,

And all that you are,

All that is happening,

As you stay with the breath,

Feel your body,

The weight of it,

The materiality of it,

Whatever you touch,

You feel,

You can touch yourself and feel your leg and feel your fingers touching your leg,

And you know that you are feeling,

And you know that you are knowing,

You know your mind,

You know your mood,

And perhaps you know your thoughts,

If they're not too quick,

You can breathe,

Stay in the present,

Feeling the body breathing,

And now taking three more breaths,

Open your eyes,

There is another definition,

Definition is not really the right word,

Another description of the sublime in aesthetics,

It refers to a greatness beyond all possibility of calculation or measurements or imitation,

So again the sublime is something unexpected,

And yet we know it's out there,

We gaze into the night sky,

We stare into a lake,

We look into the eyes of a child,

And something connects,

Something happens that creates this feeling of,

Among other things,

Giving up,

That's what it triggers,

It's a sense of,

I can't make sense of this,

I'm going to stop trying,

So we're no longer trying to process this experience mentally,

We're simply experiencing it,

It's akin to what we call bare attention or beginner's mind,

Except that all is more dramatic,

There's something in there which sort of knocks our socks off,

And again it's not predictable,

You don't know when it's going to happen,

But it does happen,

Or when it happens,

It's because you're quiet and you're focused,

Among other things,

These are the two important ingredients,

So when we take this as a serious practice which we do every day,

To take a few minutes to be quiet and focused,

Simple as that,

Then you can start to experience this sense of abandoning the need to put into words,

To explain,

To describe,

And accepting the possibility that experience can be completely naked,

And that it is not simply blissful and lovely and happy,

It's also terrifying,

And that's,

It's such a strange thing to describe or to explain,

Again,

It's not a bad explanation,

It's something that we all feel from time to time,

And if you look at meditation as the way to get there,

And if you try to use meditation as a way of getting there,

Then you'll get hemmed into a very particular type of meditation which feels fantastic and is very exciting,

But when you come back down,

It doesn't really leave you with anything,

So the sublime is a great,

It's like a gift or a prize,

If you like,

But it's not the point,

The point of mindfulness is to change our reactivity,

And by changing our reactivity we profoundly change the way we experience and live this little time that we have on planet earth,

And an improvement and connection and opening which,

Which again can take you to the sublime or bring you into the sublime in a more complete and more exuberant way,

But still this is the purpose,

It's very easy to get distracted by that in musicians.

Music is probably the easiest way to produce that sense of the sublime.

Look at the music of JS Bach,

Very mechanistic,

Very repetitive,

Shockingly repetitive really,

And yet as you listen to it,

Somehow it becomes just greater than it sounds,

There's much more to it than the simple clockwork ticking,

And you can hear the clockwork all the time,

It seems so mechanistic and so simple that it's like a child's piece of music,

But when you just sink into it,

Then it can really transport you,

And it's not just Bach,

I mean there's many types of music,

But Bach is,

He's really got that down to an art,

And it's,

You can understand it in a very simple way in his music.

So what I was saying about musicians before is,

I've known a lot of musicians or used to know a lot of musicians,

And they all had this sense that they were doing life's greatest thing,

There was nothing greater than the production of music,

Because of this emotional connection that it gives you,

And because the language is so much more powerful than the language of words in certain ways,

And again it's that tendency to go for the bliss,

To go for the sublime above all else,

Which is a distraction.

So I'm certainly not saying don't go for it,

I'm certainly saying it's a good thing to experience,

It gives,

It's feedback,

It gives tremendous encouragement to your practice when you feel that,

And it reminds you of why you're here,

Why I'm on this planet,

Why I'm inhabiting this mind,

Why I'm trying to actually work on it,

It's because I want,

Absolutely I want moments like this,

But there's more,

There's work to do as well,

And the two depends on each other.

So that's it,

I'm not going to get complicated,

But this can become a very complicated subject,

I don't want to do that.

As I say,

The key is that this is not something you can describe,

It's not something you can produce or predict,

And yet it's something profoundly nourishing in small doses,

And it can become addictive.

There are people who meditate for no other reason than to feel that,

And they spend hours and hours in meditation,

But that's all they do,

And that's not really going to take us very far in today's life,

And not many of us have the chance to sit all day in meditation anyway.

So by practicing in this way,

By practicing mindfulness,

By accessing the sublime without being stuck on it,

We understand that life continues to grow,

That there is always more,

There is plenty to encourage us to encourage us to do what?

To work,

To move towards it,

To always question ourselves,

To always wonder about this experience,

To always say,

How am I feeling?

What is this?

And knowing that not all the answers come in words,

Some of them just come in experience,

And to be content with that,

To be able to put that down and accept that,

I can't explain this,

But this is true,

It is already a huge letting go,

Because as you know we get addicted to this thing,

This explanatory organ we have in our head that describes and accounts for everything,

Or pretends to,

And causes so much confusion.

All right,

Make yourselves comfortable,

Take a nice breath,

And let go.

And the breath fills your body,

Not just your chest,

Not just your abdomen,

The breath is conveyed to every cell of your body,

Through the blood,

Through the pumping,

Through the mechanisms which bring oxygen into the blood,

And blood into the cells,

Nutrients,

Nutrients,

Which are constantly fighting disease,

Invaders,

Bacteria,

Viruses,

Even cancer,

Body is constantly working,

Seeking and destroying,

And the air fills your lungs,

Fills your chest and your abdomen,

Fills your arms and legs,

Fills your head and face,

And your body is bursting with life,

Bursting with intelligence,

Bursting with intelligence,

With the ability to know so many different ways,

Know by touch,

Know by sound,

You know by taste and smell and sight,

And these things that you know pass through your body,

Through the sense organs,

Into the brain stem,

Into the upper brain,

Where they're processed,

Categorized,

Memorized,

Compared,

Put in place,

And where they trigger reactions,

Emotions,

Memories,

Anxieties,

Everything that you experience starts in the body,

Everything in the body is processed by your mind,

Your mind so much more than just thoughts,

Knowing this moment with bare attention,

Feeling your chest rise and fall,

Feeling the breath come and go,

You can ask yourself now what is this?

This knowing,

This sensing,

This sense of me being here,

Changing moment by moment,

Trying to grasp my experience even as it passes into a new experience,

A new moment,

And meanwhile the breath comes and goes,

Your chest rises and falls.

And now you can find your attention to the very center of your chest,

This very simple motion in,

Out,

Out,

Expand,

Contract,

Open and close it,

And again ask yourself what is this?

Not to answer in words,

To answer with your attention,

What is this?

How does it feel?

How do you feel?

When you ask what is this,

Does this include you?

Are you part of this experience?

Or are you an observer from afar?

Or is there no difference?

Stay with the breath,

In good moments,

And knowing that this moment will not be repeated,

This breath will not come back,

This experience is passing even now,

Every sensation,

Every feeling,

Thoughts,

Memory,

Every imagining,

Mind,

All passing as you breathe in and out,

As you savor the moment,

As you stay with the breath,

Keeping the simple basic animal rhythm,

Which allows your mind to open,

Blossom,

To flower,

Expand,

To not be constrained by words and explanations,

To be free of goals or intention,

Just be.

And now taking three more breaths,

Open your eyes.