Jhānas and Insight

What I would like to talk about today is primarily the relationship of jhānas and insight -- something about that, at least, quite a lot about that. And in a way, it's fortuitous, some of what came up in the Q & A yesterday. Some of the questions really elicited a sort of outlining, explaining of a kind of different way of framing what insight could be. So we've already kind of made good headway with a lot of this -- the insight part, at least. Some of you, regarding the insight part, have heard or read this kind of thing many times. It's been framed to you many times. And for some of you, it will be really quite new. And so, fine either way.

My experience teaching this over the years is that to really fully understand what we're saying here, or rather, this frame, this framework for an understanding of what insight could be, or how we can understand the journey of insight and what we're doing, and actually, the journey of Dharma -- so it's not just insight meditation. It's how the whole thing fits together and can kind of fit together quite coherently, in a way that it just goes really into the depths, in a very coherent way, and the whole Dharma coheres in that. That framework really takes a while to fully understand. And it takes really a while to really understand the implications of it.

So to me, part of the reasons for presenting the Dharma this way, or presenting insight this way, is because the implications are profound, and coherently profound. It's very, very rare for someone to fully understand this and fully understand its implications on two or three hearings or reading, or something like that, or even sometimes ten. You may think you do, or one may think one does, but experience has shown me over some years of teaching that actually, even when people think they do, there's more here, to really grasp this. So if it feels like this is, "What the hell are you talking about?", that's all fine and normal, because this is a process of understanding something. It should be. If you feel like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know all that," then maybe that might be the time to sort of question a little bit. It takes time; it takes repetition; it takes pondering -- and again, this kind of active pondering. Someone told me -- they came, did a long retreat, we worked together, and then they went back home, and very wisely, I thought, were trying to fit this framework (that I'm going to explain) about insight that we've already touched on -- were trying to fit it into frameworks of Dharma or insight meditation that they already knew. And so, "Well, it must be just a version of that," or whatever. And after a lot of hard thinking, and a lot of intelligence, realized that they couldn't. Actually, it was something quite different. But the point I'm trying to make is about the active pondering and the active wrestling with something -- and practice. It's quite rare for someone to have done all that with this. So if you feel confused, there's good grounds for that -- hopefully not just because I'm completely incoherently babbling. [laughs] That may be the case!

It's also, some of you will know, a lot of what I'm going to say today -- regarding insight and emptiness and that business -- forms, really, the conceptual foundation for Soulmaking Dharma. And it's kind of what gives legitimacy to Soulmaking Dharma, and doesn't just make you as a Soulmaking Dharma practitioner easily consignable to the fruitcake bin. [laughter] It's really ... [laughter] Okay, so back to repeating a few [things]. Some of this we've said already, either yesterday or earlier in the retreat, but still, because it's difficult to really see how it all coheres, and really digest that in one's being, repeating a bit, and some will be repeat from, as I said, near the beginning, and some perhaps from yesterday, but perhaps in different words, different approaches.

Perhaps most common in the Dharma world, with regard to jhāna practice, is a kind of view: first you practise your jhānas, and you get that together. Or rather, in a session, even, first you do your jhānas, then you do your insight. Right? And if you're not into jhānas, because either they're dangerous or taboo or they're ridiculously too difficult to reach, first you practise your concentration; you're steadying your mind, then you do your insight. Right? That's a kind of normal way of ... Come across that? Yeah? That's perhaps the common view: first the concentration, if no jhāna -- jhāna or concentration, then the insight.

As I pointed out in one of the other talks (and I gave that example, when we went through all those Pali words), to me, reading that passage and kind of getting a sense of the context of it, and similar passages in the Pali Canon -- this is really a very contrived formula that the Buddha's presenting in a certain teaching situation. The whole thing is probably a contrivance. It's, you know, first you do jhāna one, then you do jhāna two, in a session, then you do jhāna three, then you do jhāna four, and then you do your vipassanā, or whatever. If you kind of get a grasp of the session and who he's talking to, it's not really an instruction for, "The meditator sits down and does this thing in order," I don't think. You could, but to me it doesn't read -- there's not anything convincing there at all to suggest that this is what you need to do in your forty-five minutes of sitting, or whatever. So first, the usual view: first your concentration, then your insight. And you can, one could look at passages like that and say, "Well, the Buddha's saying it. Look at this." But I don't actually view such passages as actual meditation instructions, really, at all.

And again, repeating other stuff we've said, there's a view that when you're concentrating the mind, you're sharpening the mind. You're making it more 'pointy,' its ability to to point, and you're sharpening Mañjuśrī's sword (Mañjuśrī is the bodhisattva of wisdom). So really, what you're doing in concentration, the most important thing that you're doing is sharpening the mind, 'sharpening Mañjuśrī's sword' (in inverted commas) so that your mind and the gaze of your mind, the attention of your mind, can dissect the phenomenal world, dissect experience. And in that dissection, it dissects so finely because of how sharp Mañjuśrī's sword, mind, has become through the concentration, through the one-pointedness -- dissects it so sharply that it reveals the ultimately true, atomic nature of things: that there is a momentary arising and passing of five aggregates, etc., through time, very, very fast. And if I sharpen my sword enough, I can see that.

Or (and again, this is all repeat) one has the kind of view that what you're really doing in concentration practice is gathering the energy of the mind like a laser beam, similarly. And that laser beam of intense energy gets focused on something. It gets focused on a rock, layers of rock. And because of the intensity, and because of the power of the laser beam, the power of the mind, empowered, energized, gathered together through concentration, that laser beam is able to drill down through layers, through rock layers of construction, rock layers of fabrication, rock layers of illusion, all the way down until it reaches something called 'reality.'

Or (again, all this is repeat from the beginning of the retreat) there's the view that what you're really doing in concentration is making the mind so steady, imperturbably steady, that this unwavering gaze cannot help but see the truth of things. The unwavering gaze -- we don't know the nature of things, we don't see the truth of things because our gaze is not unwavering enough. It wobbles. We get micro-distracted or hugely distracted. If we can just unwaveringly gaze at something, that will reveal how things are, how things really are.

Or there's an idea -- and again, some of this is explicit. Some of it's implicit. Some of it, you have to kind of tease it out of a way of thinking that you hear about. Or we have the idea, and/or we have the idea, that getting rid of thought is what we're trying to do through concentration. Thought is the problem. Thought is the enemy and the obscurer of truth. And that when we get rid of thought through concentration, then, in doing so, we're lifting the veils on reality, because thought is obscuring that way. We lift the veils on reality, on the real world.

So there's all of those, as I said, explicit or implicit kind of conceptions of what we're doing, and how 'concentration' fits into what we're doing. Then, perhaps more recently, but perhaps, to some degree, all the way along the history of Buddhism, there's also the idea that awakening doesn't really involve any extraordinary or deep insight or realization. Awakening, in this view, just really involves the ordinary sense of things, the ordinary sense of the world that everyone would agree on, but without the tendency to papañca, to gross papañca, that we all know -- that getting caught up and self-obsessed, and making a big issue of this or that. So just the ordinary sense of things, no extraordinary insight, without so much of a tendency or without any tendency for gross papañca, and with a reduction of the three kilesas, the three primary defilements: greed, aversion, and delusion. And that becomes what awakening is. And then we have to ask: well, what do you mean by 'delusion,' if you've said there's no extraordinary realization? And in some models, delusion will just be -- delusion and papañca are equivalent. Papañca, because of its creating all this mess everywhere, is basically delusion. You're believing all kinds of nonsense, all kinds of stuff that's not true, swimming in that murky, turbulent soup. And that's delusion. So that's what you get rid of, when you get rid of avijjā, for instance.

Or it may be that the avijjā is a little more deeply defined as 'believing in a real personality, believing in the self as a reality of personality,' so that then, okay, there is this -- nothing really special changes; there's no special insight or realization about the nature of things -- just the ordinary sense of the world, less papañca, less greed and ill-will, and the end of the belief in the personality. And instead, the belief, perhaps, in the process of the aggregates in time. The true nature of the self is this process of momentary aggregates arising and passing, five aggregates of body/mind, arising, passing, moment to moment. And that's what awakening is, and that's what an awakened person knows.

So in that last system, or the different variations of it, there may be no place for jhāna practice at all, because why would you need jhāna practice? There's no extraordinary, as I said, or deep insight/realization into the nature of things. It's just the ordinary sense of things. Less papañca. Maybe jhāna has a place in exactly that, as a kind of retraining the mind into the habit of non-papañca. So that's what happens when we're in jhāna: the papañca is just very quiet, quietens very much. And that's the purpose of jhāna practice: you're just getting used to less papañca until the mind is weaned off the habit of papañca. So jhāna has its [place]; that's its place. Or it is that state of [non-papañca], or somehow it contributes to the lessening of gross papañca. So there are variations of this view, this kind of view, to different degrees.

As I pointed out before, all of them -- and this is really, really key -- all of them, quite rightly, need to situate the view of concentration, and thus of jhāna practice, coherently within a larger view, which must somehow start with, "Where am I going? What is awakening?" So the view of awakening, which needs to be intimately tied up with, "What is the view of truth and reality?" -- they go together, the view of awakening and the view of truth and reality. Someone may not have even thought this way, but it needs to be, to some degree, coherent this way. The view of awakening is tied in with, "What is the view of truth and reality?" If we're absolutely fixed on a certain view of truth of reality -- this world, as it seems to common sense, post-Isaac Newton and Descartes and all those people, is the reality of things -- my awakening, or my vision of awakening, has to fit into that view, whatever it is. The view of awakening -- tied in with that is the view of truth and reality. And drawing on that, or emerging from that, is the view of what insight is. Do you see how these fit together? View of awakening, truth and reality, insight. Insight is what opens up truth and reality, and that gives me awakening.

And then, last stage within all that, within all that framework, I have to situate coherently, what is my conceptual framework, what's my view of jhānas, or no jhānas, jhānas, what for, and as we said before, what do I emphasize within jhāna practice? So what I emphasize moment to moment -- I'm really fussing over this, "Can I blooming well stay with this, my nostrils, or whatever?" How much I emphasize that, and how much I even get upset or not at its success or failure in the moment, is actually determined by this larger-scale structure. How does my ability to stay at the nostrils relate to insight? "What do I mean by insight?" is related to "What's my view of reality and truth?" And that's related to awakening. You see how all this nestles together? It must. Now, it needs to be, to some degree, coherent. But all this fits together in different models, different paradigms.

What's also quite common is that, if someone is supportive of jhāna practice, then jhānas contribute to insight. So jhānas lead to insight. Much less so the other way round: insight is much less regarded as -- insight practice as a process, or insight per se, having insights -- as something that opens up the jhānas or delivers the jhānas. So the causality is one way. And that's probably, again, what most of you have come across, right? Jhānas go to insight.

What we were saying here earlier in the retreat is that jhānas are not enough for liberation, which we said, but they have their part in what contributes to liberation, alongside other factors -- not just insight, but other factors that we talked about. Jhānas contribute to liberation, awakening, or jhānas are part of the pool of factors that open up liberation. And insight is a large contributing factor to liberation as well. What I want to say as well -- so jhānas can bring insight, absolutely. Jhānas should deliver insight. And we want to going into it. What I want to go into today is: how? How do jhānas bring insight? But also, I want to stress that insight leads to jhānas. So another way into jhānas is through insight. Or if you're doing insight, let's say, in what I would say is the most fruitful way, jhānas are going to be very available on that road. And so, jhānas lead to insight; insight leads to jhānas. And the question in both directions is: how?

So, not wanting to dismiss any of these other conceptions at all, but really wanting to add to them. There are some modifications I would definitely make to some of them regarding views about what's ultimately true, and what's ultimately real, but it's all good. There is a place for the laser beam. There is a place for all the rest of it. But in addition to all those views, all those ways of conceiving, with necessary ontological modifications, what we would like to say is that an awakened person knows something deeply. They know something. And to know something deeply means, not just as an idea, not just in the head -- in the heart, in the being. They know something deeply, and they can engage that knowing in their very sense of things. And they can engage that knowing deliberately in their very sense of things. It's a deep heart-knowing.

And what do they know? They know the emptiness of all phenomena. That's what an awakened person knows: the emptiness, the total emptiness of all phenomena, the total, radical emptiness of all phenomena, which means a phenomenon is empty, and it doesn't leave any bit of itself or any level of itself that's not empty. That's what the 'radical' bit means: it goes to its root. An awakened person knows deeply the emptiness of all phenomena.

There is no electron, no basic unit of matter, that is not empty. That happens to agree with the current understanding of physics; that may or may not change. But there's no electron. There's no basic building block of matter that's not empty. There's no self or self-view or conception of the self that is ultimately true -- I'll say it the other way around -- that's not empty. All conceptions, all views of the self are empty. This is what an awakened person knows. The energy body is empty. Space is empty, and not just empty of having things in it -- empty of having independent existence, of existing independently of the way of looking, of having inherent existence. Awareness is empty. Awareness is not fundamental. Consciousness is not fundamental. It is empty too. Time is empty; not just past and future, but the present moment too: empty. Awakening is also empty. So this is what an awakened person knows.

And to say that they're empty means, as we said yesterday, that none of these things, no phenomenon whatsoever exists independently of the way of looking. It exists as this or as that dependent on the way looking, and it exists as anything at all dependent on a way of looking. It does not fabricate as a phenomenon unless the way of looking makes it fabricate as a phenomenon.

So what's that got to do with freedom from suffering? Is it obvious what it's got to do with freedom from suffering?

Yogi: [inaudible]

Rob: Yeah. Derek said we only cling to what we think is real, actually. So when I first started teaching this, and I realized I was going on and on and on about this stuff, and then some people were just like, "Well, why are you talking about this?" It was just as if it was some abstract philosophy sort of thing. But no, it's very intimately, directly connected with suffering. Suffering comes from clinging and craving, right? That's pretty much what most Buddhists believe. And soulmakers, shush. [laughter] No, soulmakers also believe that. And we have something else called 'eros.' We're not going into that today. Craving and clinging are what cause suffering. Take them away, and the suffering goes out. You should know this at some level, or you wouldn't be here if you didn't know. But we only crave and cling to what we sense is real. When we realize something is not real, we don't cling or crave. We don't try and get rid of it -- so the sense of self, the sense of an object or other, the sense of time, all these things.

So seeing the emptiness means seeing that they're not really real in the way that we thought they were. We say they're neither real nor not real. But that's enough to take away the sense of inherent reality that we usually have in relation to things, dependent on which our craving and clinging gets established. And dependent on that craving and clinging is suffering. This is really important.

Okay, well, how does an awakened person get to such a knowledge, such a sort of far-out sounding understanding and knowledge? Again, it's in the heart, in the whole being. Well, one way is by playing with what we call 'ways of looking,' which we talked about again yesterday, and several other times. 'Way of looking' means the way of relating, the way of conceiving, the way of viewing, the way of sensing. And everything that's wrapped up in that relationship with any phenomenon, any experience, perception, experience, appearance in the moment -- that's what we mean by 'way of looking.' Everything that's wrapped up in there.

And one begins -- one way of doing it -- one can begin playing with different ways of looking, and one starts to see, like a scientist: "Oh, well, this way of looking -- actually, when I look that way (like when we're in the middle of papañca), it actually fabricates more suffering." And suffering gets worse or gets locked into place. It actually fabricates more sense of self. The self feels more solid, more separate, more contracted, etc. It fabricates more of whatever it is that I'm tussling with or grasping after, more of an object. And more sense of time -- time itself also feels heavier, more pressured. One starts to realize all this. And because I'm playing with ways of looking, I also start to realize: "Oh, there are some ways of looking that do the opposite." They release suffering. They unfabricate the self to some degree. They unfabricate objects and things to some degree. And they unfabricate, eventually, one sees, the sense of time as well. Those are the interesting ones. Actually, it's all interesting, but those are the ones I want to follow and develop: the ones that unfabricate suffering, and with the unfabrication of suffering, they unfabricate self, and the world of objects, and eventually time, etc.

And one can, over practice, getting really interested in this, and also the delight of practising this way -- not just the art of it, but the freedom that it delivers in the moment. I'm looking at this thing this way (means I'm relating to this thing this way), and right there and then -- I don't have to wait ten months or ten years -- the suffering goes out of experience. The self is less fabricated. The object itself gets less fabricated. There's release, relief, ease, openness, etc., and all kinds of, we could say, mystical states of consciousness begin to open, because the self and objects and time are not being fabricated in their usual way. So other senses of things open.

Delightful ways of practice -- one gets really interested in that -- develops one's range of ways of looking, and also one's depth. In other words, as we said yesterday, some ways of looking let go of a little bit of clinging, and some ways of looking that we can develop let go of clinging at a whole deeper level, a much subtler level of clinging. And because they do that, they have even more power in unfabricating, because it's the clinging -- and I use that word very widely -- but it's the clinging that's fabricating. It's fabricating not just the suffering, but also the self, objects, the world, time, etc. So one gains, one develops one's range, and one's skill, and one's depth, and goes deeper and deeper into this, learning to unfabricate more, through the ways of looking that one is developing through practice.

We talked about, for example, pleasure and pain and equanimity, and said equanimity is a letting go of push and pull. In other words, it's an attenuating, a letting go of clinging. And as I just do that and do that and do that, the pleasure and pain get less, eventually. The pain might go to pleasure and then get less. I get left with neutral vedanā, and eventually that fades. Eventually, as we touched on yesterday, again, everything fades. No thing, no self, no consciousness (in the usual sense), no time, no present moment, no space, no world. Buddha had different names for that: the Unfabricated, the Deathless, cessation of perception and feeling, the Unborn, lots of different names. We can open to that, something that's incredibly hard to put into language, because language is based on a world of things and subjects and objects. But this is possible for us. If we just take this one idea of ways of looking, notice that some fabricate more and some fabricate less, and get really interested in that, and just keep going, we can get all the way to the Unfabricated, just following one principle and playing -- playing and having a fun and a delightful time doing it.

It doesn't stop there, I would say. Some people would say it stops there: "Now, I've realized the Unborn." I would say it doesn't stop there, because then, one can also see: time is empty as well. And one may have seen that, getting there, or one may need additional little ways of seeing that. And also, what is fabricated is empty. Fabrications are empty. The things that are fabricated in this process -- they're not real things either. So time is empty. The time in which the process of fabrication happens also is empty. And fabricated things are empty. That means the whole notion of fabrication is empty. So the very idea and thread that we were following, this idea of fabrication, ends up dissolving as well. It's empty too.

When one had reached the Unfabricated, the Unborn, whatever you want to call it -- some people use the word nibbāna for that -- there can be an extreme duality between (1) that transcending of the world in the Unfabricated and (2) the world, the world of saṃsāra, the world of form, the world of struggle -- this world that we all agree on. And then there's this that's completely transcendent. This [the Unfabricated], holy. This [the world], essentially worthless except as potential stepping-stone to that. Once one has seen that fabrication, too, is empty, then actually, the whole duality collapses as well, because there is no fabricated, and without a fabricated, the Unfabricated, as an idea, doesn't make sense. So that hierarchy of sacredness collapses: everything empty, everything sacred; Unfabricated, fabricated; no ultimate truth; no place that has, ultimately speaking, more reality; no view that has ultimately more reality than another. There are only left ways of looking. That's what we have as human beings, an awakened human being: only ways of looking, a huge range and depth of ways of looking, ways of playing with perception, and the art of that.

And we can do that, an awakened person can do that for different ends. Classical Buddhadharma, of course -- why do I choose this way of looking over that way of looking? It's because I want less suffering. So this situation, I look at this way to reduce the suffering. It's just basic Four Noble Truths in condensed version. When you get into Soulmaking Dharma, actually, you might choose other reasons for ways of looking that are not primarily the reduction of suffering. That's not really what you're going for. You're going for something else, sometimes. There will often, in Soulmaking Dharma, of course, be an overlap -- in other words, when we choose a view because we want the sacredness there, or the beauty, or the soulmaking, that most often also reduces the suffering. But sometimes not. Classical Buddhadharma -- that's why we choose certain things. Everything's oriented to reducing suffering.

So practising -- what was that word that the Buddha used? -- mudubhūte, the malleability of mind, the malleability of perception, the malleability of ways of looking, of views. Or we say, playing with perception, playing with perceiving -- this is a way of construing what insight practice is: playing with perception, and seeing, through playing with perception, what happens when I look this way, when I look that way, when I look that way, when I look a fourth way, seeing what the perception is. I perceive a certain way the perception is. The experience, the appearance, the phenomenon depends on the way of looking. So that, in a nutshell, is what we could say is insight practice, and how it all hangs together.

Now, we can understand -- and in a way, we've hinted at this quite strongly several times already -- we can actually understand the jhānas as doing that too, as well as being these really, really valuable resources in all kinds of ways that we've talked about, as well as (certainly the way we're teaching them here, and the way that you guys are practising) kind of developing our sensitivity and our attunement, and all the beauty of that, and the gifts that that gives in all kinds of realms of our lives -- relational, emotional, energetic, soulmaking etc.; also for emptiness practices.

But as well as resources and sensitivity and everything else we've said about the jhānas, we can also view them as playing with perception and begin to understand, actually, there's one spectrum. There's one spectrum of more or less fabrication of suffering. Dukkha is a better word; 'suffering' is such a heavy word in English. But dukkha. In other words, sometimes you open to a new level, and you wouldn't have considered where you were before had any dukkha in it whatsoever, and it's only when you go deeper that you realize, relatively speaking, the older level (which you've now transcended) had some very subtle dukkha in it. So I prefer the word dukkha; because it's a foreign word, it can keep for us a much subtler range than we tend to associate with the word 'suffering.'

But you realize there's one spectrum: one spectrum of dukkha. We can be fabricating a lot, really a lot, somewhat less, somewhat less, somewhat less, somewhat less, all the way down. But that spectrum of fabrication of suffering is the same spectrum as the fabrication of self-sense. They're just two threads of the same rope, of the same spectrum. When we're suffering a lot, the self-sense is fabricated a lot: much more solid, much more contracted, much more separate, much more ergh! But so is the world is fabricated. The perception of the world is correspondingly -- it's just another thread of that rope, of one spectrum. And so is clinging, if we use the word broadly enough. This end, the dukkha end, has got a lot of clinging and craving in it. And as I said, when you start engaging practices, and really sustaining them and playing with them, practices that take away clinging, craving, repeatedly, moment after moment, then we move down that spectrum. And as we take away more subtle levels of clinging and craving, we just find it's the same spectrum. So this is a spectrum of suffering. It's a spectrum of self-sense. It's a spectrum of object-sense, thing-sense, because they fade as well: sensations, things, sights, sounds, all the rest of it, the world; also of clinging, and also of jhānas. It's one spectrum. We're just talking about different, if you like, threads of a rope. Does this make sense? I'm going through it quite quickly.

[38:02] A few little things I want to throw in at this point -- a little bit came out of Andy's question yesterday, which I'm glad you asked. After a jhāna, in a jhāna, or kind of around the territory of a jhāna, and Andy was asking about the happiness and the sense of self in relation to the happiness, but let me say a couple things. In the territory of a jhāna -- after, in, or around it, sort of peri-jhānic -- a few things happen in relation to classical insights, again, which is tied into what I've just been saying. We're more clear, and we're more spacious, so that something like impermanence is just completely obvious to us. In that space, it's obvious that things are impermanent. Also, because of the yumminess of a jhāna, whichever jhāna, it's much easier to see the dukkha, the relative dukkha of other pleasures, or the fact that other pleasures are a lot less satisfying. So when you've tasted, let's say, even just a really strong pīti, and you're really absorbed in it, it would be hard to match that with any sensual experience -- certainly the happiness.

More saliently for what I want to say today -- but these are all related, because they all have to do with the kind of unfabricating -- is that in, around, or after a jhāna, it's much easier to see that phenomena are not-self; they're not me, not mine. It's much easier to see. Why? Tying it to what we just said about this rope -- this spectrum of fabrication which has different threads in it, of different things that are, if you like, getting fabricated together as one process, just different aspects of the same process -- the jhāna, tying it to that idea, is already less fabrication of self. And so, because the self is less fabricated, what the self habitually does is also less fabricated at the time. And one of the things the self habitually does is appropriate -- 'me, mine, me, mine, me, mine, me, mine.' Without thinking about it, that's what the self does. The more self, the more me-mining, the more appropriation. As the self gets fabricated, just naturally, in the jhāna, fabricated less, naturally fabricated less, there's less me-mining. And because there's less me-mining, less appropriation, things are much more likely to appear to us as 'not me, not mine' -- anattā, as the Buddha said, 'not me, not mine.' And the transition from that point to deliberately viewing things as 'not me, not mine' is just a very small step, because it's already in that direction.

So there is, in jhānas, this attenuation, this unfabricating of self. And all these factors unfabricate together; the self is one of them. However, I want to read a note that I got. This is really, really important:

You talked about resistance against the idea of having an autonomous self. I felt this was blocking the whole process.

So a person reflected on this, and then they said:

I felt this was blocking the whole process, and made me believe that I had matured in some jhānic states, when actually this wasn't the case. Today, it feels more like this belief of 'having matured' took me away from actual learning. I then noticed that I tend to stay in a passive/receptive mode during meditation, but also in life. When, today, actually, I tried to play with active and receptive modes, finally a strong felt sense of 'I' arose. 'I' am alive. 'I' exist. I am alive. I exist. I am here in this world. I can influence. I can be active. I felt very powerful. Now I can actually find my pace and my way of working. This psychological basis just wasn't developed. Wow! What a blessing and lovely fruit of this retreat.

This is really, really important. So it's important because it stands in contradiction to what I just said, but an important contradiction. I just said the jhānas are about fabricating less, and here a person was saying, "Actually, by the way we're practising jhāna, it does invite the self to be active, to be more autonomous, to see itself and feel itself as more active and autonomous." That sounds like a more separate and more fabricated self, right? Really, really important. That's why I said, at some point in the last few days: careful. You may think, or one might think, very understandably, "I need a jhāna to heal something." And it may be more not the jhāna that we need to heal something. For some people it is. They need to just really bathe in that third jhāna, whatever it is.

But probably, more often than not, it's something in the ways that we're adopting to work that heals something psychologically, and has its mirror in the life. It's mirrored in the life that that freeing and that opening and that reclaiming is maybe going to be more significant than whether I have attained X or Y jhāna. So when we talked about this, I said, you know, the ability to stay, and choose to be intense, and choose to show up that way -- 'me' being intense, and the 'me' can be quite a subtle sense, but still, I have to sustain something. Or opening, opening, really opening the being, surrendering, opening, abandoning. Or what this person is sharing. Or the happiness -- that's a kind of emotional range that I don't usually let do something. There are many, many examples. But here's a very important kind of exception. Okay, so that was one thing. One spectrum. So everything's tied into these threads of one rope.

So revisiting our idea of working with pain, and being able to look at pain, and the pain unfabricates, or we refabricate an unpleasant sensation in the body as pleasant -- pīti or happiness or whatever it is. Just to be clear about this, because it might be that someone hears about that and thinks, "Well, yeah. When you're meditating there's pain. Basically, because of the meditation, you're relaxing, and the relaxation allows the tissues, the muscular tissues to relax, and therefore expand, and they're not squeezing on the blood vessels," and excuse me if my biology is completely wrong, but something like this. "They're not squeezing on the blood vessels, so I'm not getting pins and needles, and they're taking the pressure off the system and the tension, and so, some pain disappears just because of organic, biological relaxation reasons." So yes, absolutely, there's a level that happens there. And then, to start talking about emptiness just for that would be a complete misuse of the word 'emptiness,' and would just be easily dismissible. But there is some of that going on. There's an organic reality to it, if you like. We can explain it in 'real' organic terms -- let's say that -- or in terms of 'real' organicity.

Secondly, though, is the level of the energy body. [46:54] So the level of the physical body: muscles and blood vessels and nerves and all the rest of it. But then there's the level of the energy body, and the energy body changes. Almost like a definition of certainly the first four jhānas, or first five jhānas at least, is there are changes in the energy body. And the energy body is more homogenous, more unified, and has a different vibration. But another way we could actually understand what the energy body is is that the energy body is a kind of reality that straddles the physical and the mental, a kind of reality that straddles the physical strata of the cosmos and the mental, so that it spans those, so that it is, for instance, susceptible to the mind state. The mind state changes; the energy body changes. Mind state is obviously a mental factor; it's extremely susceptible and malleable through the mind. And we've talked about using the imagination. Why? Imagination is in the mind, and the energy body experience, the way the energy body is, how the energy body is, will be affected by what's in the mind -- if I imagine this, if I imagine that. So we don't tend to think in these terms any more in our culture. Probably back in medieval times, there were certain strata of reality, ontological categories that spanned both the physical and the mental. The energy body is one of them. So there's that level too, and that's happening in jhāna, and that's happening when a pain dissolves, etc., through meditation, through jhāna.

And there's a level of this playing with perception, and the fact that actually the pain is unfabricating, and it's empty, and it's malleable, and therefore can be refabricated. So there are all these three levels: (1) a kind of level of organic reality, so to speak, (2) a level of energy body, which spans physical and mental, and (3) the level of emptiness and playing with perception. They're all part of that experience.

Okay. So yesterday, when we talked about Bāhiya,^[1] and this idea of bare attention, which that sutta doesn't use those words 'bare attention,' nor are they anywhere in the Pali Canon. I don't even know what the Pali would be for bare attention, or even mindfulness, the way many people would understand what mindfulness is, or in the past have understood what mindfulness is -- maybe it's changing now. I don't know. Despite kind of not being ultimate, if we fit it into this whole idea of a spectrum of fabrication, then actually it just fits nicely at some point on the spectrum of fabrication. When I'm engaging bare attention, there are certain things I'm not adding to the experience. I'm not adding a lot of papañca, I'm not adding a lot of views and concepts, and I'm not layering over that way. That's probably how you've been taught about bare attention, right? Not to layer. I'm doing a similar thing here. We talked yesterday about taking things out of the way of looking that are automatically there. Also in bare attention and mindfulness, there's stuff we're taking out. So it's a relatively skilful way of looking. There's a modicum in it of unfabrication, or it involves a modicum. To a degree, we're fabricating less. [50:45]

The mistake would be to think that what we sense through bare attention is an unfabricated reality. Then I've approached this whole question of fabrication with a presupposition of where unfabricating stops, of what actually is real and is not. It makes a huge difference. I'll come back to this. The concept that I've started with was limited. It wasn't an open-ended investigation, despite whatever rhetoric I might be dressing it up in. I've actually limited something. I arrive at that limit, and then I call it 'ultimate reality.' It's still very skilful though. On this rope of unfabricating, on this spectrum of unfabricating, it's still somewhere! It's just, it's kind of more at this end. But still, relatively speaking, less suffering, less self, less all the rest of it.

Okay. So, thinking about the jhānas and their relationship to insight, I mentioned this phrase that I use -- there must be a more elegant phrase -- but what I call 'after-effects on perception.' And this, to me, is hugely significant, this idea of the after-effects of certain states of consciousness on our perception, because those after-effects imply something about the dependent arising of experience, and correspondingly, they imply something about the emptiness of our perceptions. So these after-effects, as we move through more territory, jhānically and in other kinds of states, there's a spilling over, outside of the meditation, into how we sense the world -- after-effects on perception out there on the lawn, out there on your walk, whatever it is, out there with the lunch bowl in front of you, whatever. And they open new worlds and new experiences for us.

So I'm mentioning it now; I was humming and hawing whether to give the talk on the fifth jhāna, the realm of infinite space, before I gave this one. Anyway, I've decided this way. But usually, this business about after-effects on perception gets really, really potent with the formless jhānas. But I tend to think the first glimpses of it are with the third jhāna, and I mentioned that, this sort of 'world of peace,' etc. However, the other day, I got a lovely note. This was actually a few days ago, but:

For some reason, I hesitate to write these non-questions, non-issue notes. But since you seemed to enjoy the one from earlier, here's the epilogue.

So this is from our friend of the radiant Buddhas, if you remember.

Seeing everyone as radiant Buddhas was so lovely, so delightful, that I was back in the second jhāna by the time I made it outside. I then spent forty-five minutes wandering around the grounds and marvelling at how everything seemed shot through with joy.

So the after-effect on perception is basically the primary nimitta starts to colour things. Things are coloured. Things are seen that way.

I stopped in my tracks and mouthed "Wow!" at the the sight of the old fruit crates piled by the outdoor loo, the bins by the Hermitage, the hedge by the nuns' graveyard, the dead leaves on the path, all of it radiant with happiness and light -- and something beyond, something blessed. And if that's not enjoyment, well ...

So sometimes this is subtle, and sometimes it's very powerful, and not just from jhānic states -- from all kinds of states. As I said, usually, you get the first glimpse of it in the third. This person's saying, "No, earlier." But it gets very marked in the formless jhānas. Can have a very -- clearly, you hear there -- very profound and touching impress on the being, on the sense of existence. If it's just a one-off, you tend to think, "Oh, pffft, something was weird in my brain or something," or you forget about it, or it becomes just this thing that I don't quite know how to get back to.

But if it's repeated enough (and they can come from lots of other non-jhānic states as well, other perceptions, other ways of looking) going in and out of a normal perception and this kind of perception (for example, let's take from this person's note), in and out, in and out, many, many times -- at some point you start thinking, "Well, which is the real way things are?" Which is the real? Are they not shot through with joy? The universe is just purposeless and cold, or very hot matter, in the Newtonian sense? Or is there some way that joy is mystically woven into the fabric of the cosmos? That joy, perhaps, is the essence of things -- the divine essence of things? Or that there's a joy that shines through things, a transcendent joy, and that transcendent joy shines through this world of appearances, this world that we call 'the world,' this world that we've so grown accustomed to sensing in other ways, in disenchanted ways? If one goes back and forth, back and forth, so many times, which is actually real here? Which is real? How do I know? Which mind state, which way of looking reveals the way things really are?

Yogi: You said [?] equanimity. [laughter]

Rob: In the States, do you have what's called 'detention'? [laughter] Or lines. Do you know what lines are? [laughter] I'm kidding. [laughs] It's good that I've practised a lot of equanimity. [laughter] So years ago, we did, I think, three years in a row, we did a retreat. It was called Loving Kindness and Compassion as a Path to Awakening, something like that. Maybe some of you were even on it. Can't remember. Maybe a couple of others, but years ago -- it was 2006, 7, 8, I think.^[2] I can't remember. It was also a three-week or three-and-a-half-week retreat. And first week, did mettā. Second week, did compassion. And the third week, after people had developed this kind of really (by that point) quite strong current of mettā and compassion, people would say, "You walk into the meditation hall, it's like cutting the air, it's so thick with love."

But after they had developed that stream, then I gave them a practice of deliberately directing that mettā and compassion -- not to beings, self or others, but to phenomena: this sensation, this sound, this whatever it is, this pain, etc. And I let them cook a little bit, and then I came back and asked them, "Did anyone notice that when you were doing that, what it was you were directing mettā to actually faded?" "Yes." So there's almost a law here. All this depended -- that's what the Buddha calls it: a 'dependent arising.' Dependent arising is the law, Dharma. The word for Dharma is 'law.' If I trust this enough, it's like putting a cake in the oven: you go away, you set the thing, come back, and will this have happened? And for most people, yes. It's a law. They faded.

Then there's a question: oftentimes, here was a phenomenon, a sensation, an experience, a perception. When I direct the mettā or compassion to it, it fades. It unfabricates. It disappears to some degree or other, and often completely. Amazing -- similar to the kinds of things we've talked about. And then you ask, "Okay, how much mettā reveals the real thing, or the real sensation, or the real self?" A little? Or a lot? Because mettā is a skilful quality! Or kind of somewhere in the middle? We've got to get exactly a medium amount [that] will reveal the real way things are?

Mindfulness, as we said yesterday, actually is a composite. Or all attention, mindfulness is always with something else, with lots of other things. And those qualities, that composite of qualities, determine the fabrication, the unfabrication, the locking into a certain level of fabrication of whatever phenomenon the mindfulness is looking at. Now, Derek might like to say, "Okay, not mindfulness, not mindfulness -- equanimity, because equanimity gives this sense of balance," or whatever. But we've already talked about that. The more equanimity means the less push and pull, right? That's what we've defined equanimity as. Less push and pull is the same as less clinging. If I just practise that, get more and more equanimous, at a certain point (we've said this already), phenomena will fade. How much clinging reveals the real object? Here's this phenomenon, this pain, even a sight or a sound that's continuous or whatever -- how much clinging reveals the real object? A lot? A little? None? If it's none, then where's the object? It's completely faded. A medium amount?

[1:01:51] So this is what we mean, or another way of saying what we mean, by something is 'empty.' I cannot privilege a certain amount of clinging, or a certain amount of mettā, or a certain amount of equanimity. I cannot privilege any particular way of looking, or amount of what's wrapped up in the way of looking, to reveal the 'real' way something is -- anything. In other words, it's empty. It doesn't exist independently. And there's no kind of 'zero point' anywhere.

Like I said, someone already had a very strong experience, maybe others also as well -- these after-effects on perception. But when we get to the formless, they start to kind of go up a notch in their power, and what they can deliver, and the worlds that they can open up in these after-effects -- the sense of things, the way it can influence the sense of existence, impact the sense of existence, open up the very sense of the cosmos. An interesting thing, though, for when you get there, is that the strength, and even the impact, of the after-effect of perception is not actually predictable from the strength and degree of absorption of the meditation just before. So I take that as good news. You'd think, "Oh, I got a really strong seventh jhāna," or whatever it is. And then I go out there, and I expect a really strong after-effect. Maybe, maybe not. Or I go, "Ehh, it was in the neighbourhood of the seventh jhāna. It wasn't really -- I was not quite consolidated or deep," or whatever. And I get up, and afterwards, the after-effect is really strong.

So it's telling you something: don't worry too much. It's SASSIE all over again. Yes, I go for more absorption. Yes, I go for more steadiness, etc. But there's no end to that, and now we're adding, in terms of these after-effects on perception -- which again, in terms of liberation, the way I would conceive it, which is a whole different sense of the cosmos, a whole different sense of existence, is what the awakened person knows -- how absorbed I am at any time, in any sitting, may not relate to how much opening there is afterwards, in terms of the after-effect on perception and the world, the sense of the cosmos that opens up. To me, that's good news. I don't have to worry about it too much. I've got a direction to go in, but I'll be surprised by the fruits afterwards.

Okay, so we said, one spectrum. One spectrum of fabrication, more or less, one way of viewing things. And in a way, like I said, you can actually put the whole Dharma in -- the whole Dharma can be seen as relating to or pertaining to or emerging from that one understanding. Everything. We talked about generosity -- same deal. Things that don't seem like they have to do with obvious ways of looking -- same deal. But to be less fabricated means less is getting fabricated, less is getting built. There's less there in the perception, so less solidity, less substantiality. Going back to earlier in the retreat someone was saying, "Well, it looks like things are almost like I could put my hand through the walls." There's a perception of less solidity and less substantiality also to the body, also to the energy body.

Another way of saying that is there's more refinement. We've talked about this word 'refinement,' like the refined cloth: less substance, less solidity. Or refining gold or flour or something -- there's less solidity there as a substance. Again, something I've said before: if I'm unsure what this new experience I've hit, if I'm unsure, "Is that the next jhāna? Is that the next deepest jhāna?", one probably almost more important clue than any other is, "Is it more refined? Does its texture feel more refined?" Which isn't the same as, "Is it stronger or calmer or weaker?" It's "Is it more refined?" Its actual texture is more refined.

I think I'll come back to this another time, what I'm going to say right now, but I'll mention it now. There are several suttas (I think I mentioned it yesterday) where the Buddha talks about establishing oneself in a jhāna, any jhāna, and actually taking that jhāna itself as an object on which to practise certain insight ways of looking.^[3] Let's come back to it, hopefully, later in the retreat. In other words, you hold that jhānic perception in attention, the primary nimitta and everything else that's involved, and very precisely, in a very exact way, you start removing different kinds and levels of what I'm going to call 'clinging' in relation to that jhāna. I'll use that word 'clinging' to include also appropriation, 'me, mine,' or even 'me, mine' of the attention -- not just the primary nimitta, but also the attention being paid. That's also 'not me, not mine.' So 'clinging' is a big word. I use it to mean that, and more. But basically that's what you're doing. With the jhāna, it's helpful because it's a steady object. It's very, very steady. And then you start taking things away. So this is a very advanced way of practising, but it's actually very powerful, and very available for people who want to go down that road and develop it.

What happens when I do that? What would we expect to happen if I do that on the first jhāna?

Yogi: [inaudible]

Rob: Pīti ... I think I'm hearing all the right things. It will fade, pīti will stop, or it will go to the second jhāna, yeah. All of the above. So it could just go to the second jhāna. Why? Because the second jhāna is a less fabricated state. If pīti fades completely, something is fading, and it will go to the third jhāna if it fades completely. Or just generally speaking, it will fade, but the spectrum, again, is all one thing. So it will go down the spectrum of the jhānas. But this fading business, this unfabricating business, you know, sometimes it's like being in an elevator, and it just, okay, stops at every floor. But sometimes you're just in an elevator, and it just goes, whoosh! And you've missed -- it's just gotten like, "Oh. Everything's gone now." But the point is that there's an unfabricating going on. And again, the jhānic spectrum fits into this spectrum of unfabrication. [1:08:56]

All right, why do things fade with an insight way of looking? Why is there less fabrication with an insight way of looking? That's not a fair question. To explain something, you have to rely on something else, right? To use it to explain it? So if we think about the twelve links of dependent origination, how do we explain fading, unfabricating, based on the twelve links of dependent origination?

Yogi: [inaudible]

Rob: And where does that fit in?

Yogi: [inaudible]

Rob: But where? Do you know where exactly?

Yogi: [inaudible]

Rob: No. This is all good. Everyone's right. [laughs] Nāmarūpa is the fourth. It's presented as if it's in order, but that's not a really helpful way of looking at it. So usually the first -- but it's the first in terms of it's the most fundamental -- is avijjā, which means 'delusion.' The fourth one is nāmarūpa, and nāmarūpa, the Buddha says, involves different factors. It includes vedanā and perception.^[4] The way I'm using the word 'perception,' going back to the beginning of the retreat, is synonymous with 'phenomenon,' 'experience,' 'appearance,' 'perception' -- they're all the same thing. Clinging and craving come later, or they seem as if they come later when it's thought of linearly, but it shouldn't be thought of linearly. It should be thought of as a kind of -- I don't know what the word is -- completely interlinked web that's not a linear process in time. And self seems to come really at the end, with becoming and birth, if you think of the whole thing in a momentary way. But to think of a thing more, as I said, not a linear process in time, not a process in time so much.

When I'm engaging an insight way of looking -- we've already said, what defines an insight way of looking is clinging less or craving less. So it seems to come afterwards, but if we don't think of it linearly, it basically has an effect on the fabrication of self, which seems to come later after craving, clinging, becoming, birth -- that's where people usually put the self. So you can see that: less clinging, less self is fabricated, and then less dukkha and all the nasty stuff at the end. That bit's clear. But it works, as I said, not linearly as well. So it'll work back to this, what's actually the fourth link, nāmarūpa, of which one element is perception. Another element is vedanā, so that decreasing clinging decreases -- they're not on/off switches. Again, each one is a slider switch. Less clinging, craving, less self, less dukkha, less also nāmarūpa, which means less perception and vedanā, less experience and vedanā. There's a fading.

Avijjā is the first link. And as I said, it's not the first in a temporal process. It's the first in terms of what the Buddha said: "This is the fundamental problem." Everything rests on this, in that sense. What's avijjā? Avijjā is a lot of things. Or it has a lot of different levels. When I'm engaging an insight way of looking, you could say I'm engaging a view that has less avijjā in it. [1:12:40] So, going back to what Andy shared, this example of seeing something, sensing something as 'not me, not mine': to sense something as 'me' or 'mine' habitually, unconsciously, has more habitual ignorance, delusion, avijjā in it than to sense it as '[not] me' or '[not] mine.'^[4:1]

So let's contrast two ways of looking. (1) One is the normal way of looking that we have in 99 per cent of our states of consciousness -- that is, always something is 'me, mine.' Or this pain is 'me, mine,' or this pleasure is 'me, mine,' or whatever it is. It's always 'me, mine.' I'm not thinking it, but it's just there: 'me, mine.' That's one. The Buddha calls that appropriation. It's based on a self-view. He calls it avijjā. When I engage an insight way of looking, for example anattā, I'm actually looking, 'not me, not mine.'

So you could say, what I've done there is take away that particular element, that particular level of avijjā, which usually sees as 'me' or 'mine.' So avijjā, again, it's not an on/off switch. If it's all like water in some kind of plumbing system, less avijjā -- no, that won't work. [laughs] Less avijjā, in any moment, in a way of looking, means less perception, and also means less clinging and less self. Do you understand? So this is mapping this understanding onto the twelve links of dependent origination. They're not on/off switches. They're just like, if you put a lot of avijjā in your way of looking, you're going to get a much more fabricated perception, much more clinging and craving, much more suffering, much more self-sense. If I take away a lot of avijjā -- let's say I've got it half-full, whatever that is -- then I'm going to get half of my ... you know, being silly, but less perception, less suffering, less clinging, less self. If I get avijjā really, really low -- so that's another way an insight way of looking can work. It's not so much by relaxing clinging, but actually by changing avijjā in the moment, I'm taking away -- again, I think I'm doing, but I'm actually non-doing. I'm taking away the habitual avijjā that's programmed or habitual in my way of looking at any point. This is how all this fits together with dependent arising. Again, what's the Buddha pointing at when he talks? What's the most important thing the Buddha's pointing at, when he gives this teaching about dependent arising? We can get deeper, deeper into it than that, but that's enough for now.

[1:15:32] And what one finds is that, with a lot of this, and especially with the formless realms, a specific insight way of looking kind of goes with a specific jhāna. Or if I practise a specific insight way of looking, it leads to a specific jhāna, and a specific jhāna opens me up to a specific insight way of looking. A very good example of this is the seventh jhāna, the realm of nothingness, the realm of 'no thing-ness,' so that after I emerge, after one emerges from the seventh jhāna, from the realm of no thing-ness, if the after-effect on perception is reasonably strong, one can be moving around and looking around and recognizing there are things, but there's a kind of more compelling sense that these things are 'not really things.' The thing-ness of them is an illusion. There are no things. So that the jhāna, in its after-effect on perception, has delivered an insight that there are no things.

But one can also work the other way round. If, in meditation, I sit down, or stand, or whatever it is, walk, and I engage the way of looking: "No thing. There are no things. Everything is a dependent arising, or everything is fabricated in this way," it will take me to the seventh jhāna. So, specific insight, specific jhāna; they correspond, and the causality, as so often is the case, works both ways. Or the eighth jhāna: one might emerge from that, and one of the senses one can have is called 'neither-perception-nor-perception.' One of the after-effects on perception is all this, it's just a perception. It's just a perception. And again, one could take that view, 'just a perception,' and engage it repeatedly in the meditation. And I just sustain that view on all phenomena, 'just a perception, just a perception,' it will take me to the eighth jhāna. Specific insight, corresponding jhāna. [1:17:50]

Yogi: [inaudible]

Rob: Yeah, so it gets qualified a little bit by -- if you've never spent time in any of those jhānas, but you really engage that practice, everything depends on -- you know, I could teach my little niece when she's five, "Just look at everything and say, 'no thing, no thing,'" or whatever. "It's a dependent arising, empty of inherent existence. Just say, 'empty of inherent existence.'" [laughs] It's not going to take her to the seventh jhāna. [laughter] But if you understand what that means, and very, very delicately, very, very subtly -- it's not a big cogitation thing. We're really talking about a very subtle, delicate, beautiful way of looking. I understand what that means, so that when I say, 'no thing,' it's got all my understanding wrapped up in the way of looking, very subtly, very agilely. If I understand it, even if I haven't gotten to the seventh jhāna, it will take me to the seventh jhāna. If I practise anattā, 'not me, not mine' -- "I understand that one. I don't quite understand this 'no thing-ness' thing, but I understand 'not me, not mine.' I know what that means. I can make it work." If I do that, and I've already been to the seventh jhāna, then the 'not me, not mine' may well take me to the seventh jhāna. But if I haven't gone to seventh jhāna before, it may well not. In other words, sometimes what happens is, people open up from these things as far as they can go, but with training, actually -- if they go together, the jhānic training and insight training -- you can kind of stop the elevator. You press the button on the elevator. "I want to get off at floor seven," or whatever.

Usually we think of insight as something we 'get.' You're meditating, you're being mindful, and you 'get' an insight: "Now I really 'get' the fact of impermanence at another level." And that's a good way of thinking about insight. But this way of thinking about insight is insight as ways of looking, insight as something we 'do.' We actively decide to perceive in a certain way, to look in a certain way.

Once I get to a certain level, there's a way that what we're engaging are 'provisional truths,' if you like, a certain degree of less avijjā. So even this thing about 'no thing' is not quite an ultimate truth. It's pretty deep, but it's still a provisional truth, and what you're really doing is engaging a provisional truth as a way of looking. And through the jhāna, you're gaining access to that level of provisional truth, a skilful opening of perception.

Jhānas, then, are, as we said, resource, huge resources in all these ways that we've talked about before, as well as providing both indirect and direct insight. And even the second jhāna (I think I mentioned earlier on the retreat) -- just to know, and really know firsthand, that happiness, that degree of happiness, that much happiness, and that depth of happiness is available, and is not dependent necessarily on getting something from the external world or from someone else, that's an insight, you know? We also talked very briefly about the relationship between letting go of aversion and the arising of happiness. So that's also part of the insight there. Or, in the third and fourth jhānas, the fact that that kind of peace, that kind of stillness really happens when we let go of push and pull. So all this is kind of insight woven into jhānic openings.

So jhānas -- what can we say? -- they loosen attachments, and they relativize objects for us, meaning our usual sense, our usual perspectives and beliefs about things in the world, about objects, about things that we can get. They certainly relativize (as we were just talking about, the second jhāna) the pleasure that we can get from sense objects. Leaving aside the soulmaking teachings of sensing with soul, there's no way that one would get that degree of happiness that you get in the second jhāna from any sensual object. It's just of a different order, as we said earlier on the retreat. In time, or later on, or more and more, in time, they relativize the nature of objects too, or the relative nature of objects too. As I said, all these perceptions open up, these insight ways of looking, these provisional truths, and we start to see, "Yeah, a thing is a thing; it's also not a thing." So my very relation, my very sense of something is different when I've seen that. So not just the relative pleasure of something, but actually the relative nature of something becomes, well, more relativized.

So Soulmaking Dharma, just very briefly, is dependent, as I said right at the beginning, on this understanding of emptiness and the flexibility -- the idea of the potential flexibility of ways of looking. That's at the basis of Soulmaking Dharma. And Soulmaking Dharma, for those of you who are into it, also leads to that. It opens up more flexibility, and it calls into question the whole idea that there is a fixed way things are: "This is like this, and that's like that, and that's just how it is." With Soulmaking Dharma, there's another way you can pry that open. And it breaks open the whole idea that something is this way or that way in itself.

So both insight into emptiness, and also the jhānas -- in a way, the way I would teach it, they depend on our willingness to play with perception, depend on our willingness to be malleable with perception. But they deliver for us, they open up for us a malleability of perception -- both the insight work into emptiness, and the jhānic work. And you know, we talked about that with pain, and some of you have been experimenting with this and been almost startled at what's possible with unpleasant sensations -- that they can become pīti or happiness. What about the mind -- foggy mind, dull mind, agitated mind? To the degree that I know that it's empty, that's also a perception. I have a perception of a mind state. It's a perception. Everything's a perception, just a perception. And knowing that it's empty means -- the implication of knowing that it's empty means that it's malleable. It's not a fixed thing. The mind state too -- so that's maybe at some point something one can experiment with too. I've seen it with physical pain, unpleasantness. Can I also see the mind state in that way, as flexible, and then shape it?

I don't know. I would probably say that all jhānas open up for us, or deliver for us, more intuition and intuitive capacities. And sometimes that's related to creativity, like poems and music and whatever else. You know, there's something in the jhāna: it's almost like they become sources of creativity, or potentially become sources of creativity or creative openings -- intuition, let's say. But also intuition regarding insight. So again, one of the blessings of a jhāna in regard to insight is that it opens up our capacity for intuition in the realm of insight -- our intuitive seeing and grasping of things, insight.

I would still say, though, other factors are more important. So no matter how much intuition, etc., seems like it's opening up, intuition regarding insight from jhānic experience, I would still say that gets trumped by what our conceptual framework of the Dharma is, and what are conceptual framework of insight is. That will be more important. And if that's limited, it will limit what insight is possible, no matter how much the jhānic opening, and how much it feels like, "Yeah, I'm super-intuitive, and I must be really seeing reality," and all that.

So the question comes back to: is my conceptual framework for insight, or of insight, is my conceptual framework of Dharma actually big enough, helpful enough? Will it lead me -- because it should; the conceptual framework should actually lead me to more insight. Or actually, does it hinder and limit? And that will trump any sense of intuitive opening or whatever from the jhāna.

We talked about three ways it's possible to get attached to jhāna. So, last point now, but when we went into those three ways -- attached to the pleasure, attached to the sort of self-grandiosity, or attached to view -- actually, as we investigated each one, I suggested that it's more likely that the repeated experience of jhāna releases attachments, including attachments to certain insight views. And I gave the example of the sixth jhāna, and just the fact that (A) one experiences something beyond that infinite consciousness, one experiences the seventh jhāna and the eighth jhāna -- just that, and (B) the fact that it's in the map. Both the map and the experience, the conceptual framework and the experience, help me go beyond, so I don't get too entrenched and too attached to such a view.

If my conceptual framework -- and I might not even be someone who thinks I have a conceptual framework, because I don't like conception, or I think it's intellectual, or I think it's not the real deal, or whatever -- I do have a [conceptual framework], you do; everyone has a conceptual framework. It might be conscious, semi-conscious, or relatively unconscious. It might be coherent or incoherent. It might muddled or not. It might be mixed with whatever. But you can't not have a conceptual framework, I would say.

But if my conceptual framework, for example, says something like, "This vastness of awareness" -- that lovely opening that I was describing, precious opening -- "that sounds like emptiness. When I hear a talk about emptiness, it sounds like that. That sounds like the ultimate, when I hear talk about the ultimate. That sounds like the nature of mind, when I hear talk about the nature of mind as the sort of ultimate thing that one wants to open to, or the nature of awareness. That sounds like rigpa," if you know the Vajrayāna teachings. "That sounds like when the Buddha talks about consciousness without limit, without feature."^[5] "That sounds like the radiant mind," or whatever, that I've heard the Buddha talk about, or other teachers talk about, or read about, or whatever, etc. Especially when we get into Vajrayāna teachings, the language can get quite confusingly similar and not differentiated enough, really, as signposts. So if I've got that kind of conceptual framework, and I experience this vastness of awareness, and I've got no further or deeper experience than that vastness of awareness, nor have I got any way -- I not only don't have the experience, but I've got no way of going beyond that experience of vastness of awareness, no way of going further. I wouldn't know how. I wouldn't even know how to try to go further. None of that fits into my conceptual framework. My conceptual framework doesn't support any of that, or doesn't suggest how. Then I'm limited, and maybe trapped, and maybe forced into a kind of attachment to a certain view -- 'entrenched,' to use the Buddha's words.^[6]

But that doesn't have to be the case, obviously, if I have a conceptual framework that actually can keep going beyond these things. And partly, the jhānas, as I said, can be part of that, and they're woven into the same conceptual framework. And this isn't for everyone, but some people say, "Oh, yeah, that makes sense, and it allows more." There's more potency there. There's more distance. There's more depth, potential there, and less likelihood of getting entrenched in a certain view of anything as ultimate, or of "This is how things are. This is the reality of X or Y." And that's what an awakened person knows.

Okay. Let's sit quietly together for a bit.

[silence]

So I don't know how all this lands. Don't worry if it doesn't all, as I said at the beginning, if it doesn't make complete sense right now. Maybe that's the case, but it may still be, even though it doesn't make sense, that there's some kind of sense of beauty there, or something that calls you or draws you -- maybe; maybe not, of course -- some perfume, some sense of possibility. Maybe that's the important thing, if it feels like it doesn't quite make sense. Maybe that's there.

[silence]

Okay. Thank you, everybody. Time for tea. Enjoy.

---

1. Ud 1:10. ↩︎

2. See Rob Burbea and John Peacock, Loving Kindness and Compassion as a Path to Awakening (2007) [retreat talks], https://dharmaseed.org/retreats/1303/, accessed 17 Feb. 2020, as well as Rob Burbea and John Peacock, Lovingkindness And Compassion As A Path To Awakening (2008) [retreat talks], https://dharmaseed.org/retreats/1265/, accessed 17 Feb. 2020. ↩︎

3. E.g. AN 4:124, AN 9:36. ↩︎

4. E.g. SN 12:2. ↩︎ ↩︎

5. The phrase 'consciousness without feature' (viññaṇaṃ anidassanaṃ), appears at DN 11and MN 49. ↩︎

6. 'Entrenched,' possibly niviṭṭha, e.g. at Snp 4:8. ↩︎