What is Awakening? (Part 3)

Let's stay a little bit with this, with these questions that I've just kind of thrown out there. So again, rather than arguing about which definition or which setting of the bar kind of captures the (quote) "real stream-entry according to the historical Buddha," in inverted commas, we could ask why one wants the bar for stream-entry lower or higher. And actually, wrapped up in that, a corollary of this might, for some people, be: "Why, or what is going on for you psychologically in this emphasizing of the historical Buddha's take?" What assumptions are operating when we do that, when we go to the books, and we look there, and we engage in this kind of arguing and nitpicking about the texts? Why prioritize that? And what are the consequences of prioritizing that?

I realize for some that's going to sound like a very odd and dangerous and kind of radical questioning. But if you can actually open it up as a question, without any implication of "It should be this way," or "It should be that way," it's more like, really, why? What's actually going on for you, in the psyche, with all that? As I threw out as well, one of the questions: what kind of a person is made in attaining a stream-entry that, say, is 'going with the flow'? What kind of person is made in attaining a much higher bar -- say, this thing about recognizing everything, absolutely everything, including the elements, including the time, including the now, including awareness, all of it -- all phenomena are empty?

Don't know, actually. But it's more like turning the question around and looking at the result of decisions -- looking backwards, so to speak, for why we would choose this or that. I suppose that if the bar were set higher (this kind of radical emptiness of everything), that person, in their journey to that, would have almost inevitably had lots of quite interesting and unusual experiences and insights, and a pretty large range of experiences, insights, perspectives, and perhaps be shaped by the really complex and challenging journey to that level of realization, and also shaped by the kind of dedication, focus, and choices it takes to get there. I don't know.

I don't know if you've ever met anyone who declares themselves an arahant, or finally, fully enlightened: "It's finished for me. I've done it all." I don't know. But they're often not that -- I don't know what to say -- not that attractive as human beings, and not that impressive. When one hangs around them a little bit, you see, "Well, actually, there's quite a lot missing here." As one of my teachers in the States said -- I don't know if she had anyone particular in mind when she said it; it was just in mid-flow in a Dharma talk. She was talking about something, and she said, "If that's awakening, you can keep it."

Now, this business about "I've finished," someone saying, "I've finished. I've reached full arahantship. There's nothing further, etc. I am an arahant. I'm fully enlightened." I'm interested in that, or the problems with such a claim, not so much because of a kind of view like, "Oh, someone who's fully enlightened wouldn't be arrogant like that, or they'd be humble or something." That doesn't quite square with the Pali Canon, either, actually, if you know the 'lion's roar' of the arahant. But actually, for another reason: this kind of "I've done it, it's finished" view does not allow the kind of open-endedness that, to me, is much more interesting, and much more soulful, and much more fruitful, really.

Another aspect to this is -- I haven't mentioned it so far -- one could look, in all this questioning of "What is a stream-enterer?", at the ethics of a so-called stream-enterer as an indicator or a necessary and basic qualification for any kind of awakening. It's somewhere in the Pali Canon -- I can't remember where -- where the Buddha actually, I think, points to that. Or somewhere in the Pali Canon has ethics as its -- a stream-enterer can't go against sīla, ethics.^[1] But that, too, is a problem. Or, rather, in that area, we also tend to be, in the area of ethics, we tend to be blinkered by whatever is the normal ethical view of our time, of our society, or of the sub-cultures we move in.

Some of you will know my concern with climate change, etc., and flying. It's tricky, you know? I sometimes wonder. It's like a stance of thinking about the ethics of climate change, and thinking about the ethics of carbon use, individual carbon use. Scientists calculate: if we shared it out equally among the human beings of the earth, how much carbon is each person sort of -- what's their individual carbon allowance, if it was just equally shared? And that's even kind of disregarding the past, and history, and cultures, and whatnot, and the kind of excessive use of modern Western cultures, and people in modern Western cultures. Just from now on, like, what would you each be entitled to? And just a couple of transatlantic flights a year would easily exceed my quota as a sort of human being entitled to what anyone else is entitled to.

So how am I going to square that? If I'm sitting across from someone, how am I going to persuade them that I'm entitled to more carbon, so it's okay for me to do this flying? And yeah, you know, "Sorry that you can't," or "It's better for me to have it than you to have it." How do I justify that exceeding of my fair share of personal carbon dioxide emissions? Something like that, as an ethical -- it's strange, and it's uncomfortable to a lot of people. In a few years, it might be widely regarded as a kind of, "Oh, it's just a basic, adequate ethical consideration." It's like, that just may become, that's just how human beings think. It's like if you go to a party, and you eat all the cake, or you're living on a desert island, and you get to shit everywhere, and it's like, how do you justify that?

In a few years, or in some years, it may be that that's just regarded as adequate, basic, normal ethical behaviour, to not take more than your fair share of carbon, not to exceed that, rather than what it might sound right now: a way of thinking that's really kind of strange, especially if one tries to convince other people that they should think that way, and they think, "You're just obnoxious. Back off!" Actually, I read the other day that in the new set of interview questions that they ask undergraduate candidates, I think, for Oxford and Cambridge Universities in England, that's actually one of the questions -- something like, "Well, we know that flying [causes] excessive carbon emissions, and that causes dangerous climate change, will affect people. How can you justify flying?" If you know that the plane will fly anyway (as people say, "I know it's going to fly anyway, whether I get on it or not, so it doesn't really matter"), is that a valid ethical argument? And the person has got sort of a few minutes to say something, some kind of intelligent moral argument there.

So that's interesting. Oxford and Cambridge, if you know, are kind of really fusty, mainstream universities. [laughs] I don't know what to call it, but you get the picture. So it may be finding its way in as something that just becomes kind of normal. [10:42] You know, ending slavery: again, it seemed like an outrageous proposition, but eventually, it becomes like -- although there is still slavery in the world -- eventually it becomes just, "Of course, it's just a basic ethical thing." It's like, "You don't own slaves. You don't treat human beings like that." At the time, during the abolition movement, of course it was hotly debated. And people regarded -- you know, if you set free a slave in some places, you were breaking the law. Or campaigning to abolish slavery, or campaigning or working against Nazism, or to establish female suffrage, the vote -- retrospectively, all the actions are regarded as brave and ethically correct, or just kind of responsibilities. But at the time, they were really -- it was not obvious to a lot of people, and some people actually regarded them as unethical. People are going to prison now, being sent to prison for civil disobedience of different kinds, in relation to climate, in relation to environment, in relation to all kinds of things. And they are viewed by the different states or whatever as engaging in unethical behaviour.

So our views of what's ethical and what's not are really influenced by the contemporary culture that we live in and move in. Ethics has something to do with awakening, but what exactly? A person may simply be a kind of conformist ethically, rather than someone who considers their ethical choices deeply, who questions deeply, who wrestles with these difficult questions, especially difficult now, in the time of globalization, where our effects -- we actually know and can see and measure, or rather, we know and we're aware of the effects, our individual effects on all parts of the globe, and people, and animals, and plant life all over the globe now.

So it becomes much more difficult, this question, these ethical questions. A person may simply be a kind of ethical conformist, rather than, as I said, someone who considers carefully their ethical choices, and considers them deeply, and questions them deeply, wrestles with these questions, holds themselves to high ethical standards, or higher than normal. So what should the requirement be regarding ethical conformism for a stream-enterer? Is it just, a stream-enterer, you just adopt the Buddha's precepts? Is that adoption of the Buddha's precepts -- is it just another form of ethical conformism? I'm just kind of, "Oh, that's what's given to me by the tradition. That's what I do, and I don't question."

You know, there's some stuff in the Buddhist tradition that a lot of people these days are questioning the ethics of. For example, the ordination of women. I've stayed at monasteries where they weren't recycling, and I asked about it. It's like, "How come you don't recycle this plastic and all this stuff and paper?" And the answer I got was, "This is just saṃsāra. Who cares? Who cares what happens in saṃsāra? We're on our way out." It was a Theravādan monastery. Again, is that ethical? It's not breaking the Buddha's five precepts, or in a certain interpretation of the five precepts. There's a strict conformity to the monk's rules there. It doesn't say anything about recycling. And then when you get into the five precepts, as I'm sure you're aware, you know, talk about what exactly does the third precept mean, what exactly does the fifth precept mean, around sexual behaviour, around substance -- you know, alcoholic substances, drugs, etc.? The range of interpretations here, just in the Insight Meditation world, is actually really large.

We realize ethics must have something to do with awakening, and as I said, somewhere or other in the Pali Canon, it makes that connection with stream-entry and keeping ethics. But what exactly? What is the relationship with ethics? And what ethics? And what kind of a relationship is it?

So when we consider awakening -- I mean, wrapped up in much of what I've been saying is, awakening, liberation, enlightenment, whatever we want to call it, is a concept and a vision or an image, set within the context of a Dharma (in our case, Buddhadharma, but it could be a Hindu Dharma or something). Awakening is a concept and a vision or an image, set within the context of a Dharma -- a tradition, in other words. It's set within a vision, an idea of tradition. So again, if I ask my mum, "What does awakening mean to you? What does liberation, what does enlightenment mean?", it doesn't mean anything at all. She's not remotely involved in any tradition that uses any words remotely like that, so it just means nothing. It's a concept set within a tradition.

When we talk about traditions and our sense of the tradition, some modern philosophical thinking (I'm thinking now of Nietzsche, but also of Michel Foucault) looked at what's called 'genealogy.' It's not quite history, but it's like, what are all the different elements, and sort of fracturings, and strange combinations, and strange outer influxes that come in to form a whole stream or current of thinking or practice through historical time? And there's this critique there, starting with Nietzsche, of the 'fantasy of origins.' In other words, "It was something really pure at the beginning, and better then." And there's also the fantasy of a kind of single trajectory: "This is the pure tradition." These kind of fantasies (in the poor sense), these kind of beliefs in these ideas of the fantasies of origins, and the fantasies of a single, pure trajectory that can be somehow found, and that constitutes the tradition of Buddhadharma, or whatever.

Sometimes people also, wrapped up with the fantasy of origins, or similar to it, want to argue that the Buddha sort of was, in some way, radically independent of his time, and everything he taught was kind of boldly new and original, and it was just a sort of appearance of this completely new way of thinking about practice in the human realm. But, you know, Einstein's theory of relativity -- let's say, general relativity, which involves a theory of gravity -- very different from the previous theory, which was Newton's theory of gravity. I mean, radically different in a lot of ways. And at the same time, [it] borrows, and stands on, and uses as a basis, and retains a lot of what was involved in Newton's theory of gravity, and Newton's whole kind of scientific system.

So revolutions (whether they're spiritual or philosophical, or scientific or whatever), certain things have changed, but certain things just carry on uninterrupted, are still used as foundations, are retained as elements of the new view, and some are changed. And the same with the Buddha. The Buddha picked up, found himself in a certain culture, in a certain country, in a certain historical/cultural context, rich with different spiritual views, and philosophical views, and cosmological views, and took a lot of that, and changed some of it, and retained a lot of it. So the Buddhist tradition doesn't start with the Buddha, is my point here. When we say 'tradition,' it's like, it's very easy to get into a kind of idealistic thinking of what a tradition is: "There's a pure tradition, and we can find it somehow. It started with the Buddha. That was the pure tradition, and maybe it's been subject to other things, but it started as something pure." It already started as a tradition. There were already traditions, plural, which the Buddha picked up on. And that's part of the Buddhist tradition: it's already an influx of that time and that place, those cultures, etc., and those ways of thinking, and world-views, and all of it.

The reason I'm saying this is, even more so in the modern West, we bring, inevitably -- the Dharma reaches here sometime in the twentieth century, and kind of in different waves, and as modern Westerners, we bring our whole set of assumptions, interpretations, needs, dispositions, and kind of 'errors*,'* really, or changes of direction to what we, quote, 'receive' of the Dharma, which, as I said, was already a kind of multiplicity of different traditions. And that's definitely the case. It's like, it's a mishmash for us. It's a mishmash of Theravādan traditions, and a bit of Zen, and a bit of Tibetan, and a bit of Advaita, and a lot of Western world-view. We can't help that. But even if we could kind of isolate what we receive from what we bring to what we're receiving -- which is impossible, but even if we could -- what we received was already plural, and the result of 2,500 years of previous genealogical development, and all these fractures, and misinterpretations, and contradictions, and influxes from different cultures, etc.

So I'm pretty sure I've said this in a talk somewhere or other, but when Buddhism was brought to China, it was rejected at first by the Chinese, by the Chinese culture, outright. It made no impact whatsoever. And then later, it was accepted. A second sort of advance was accepted, but actually, it accepted only some of its elements. So Chinese Buddhism is very, very different than Pali Canon Buddhism -- or at least, certainly the way it evolved. But it only accepted some of its elements, some of its strands, and some of its foundational concepts, and it mixed them with Taoism and Confucianism, and basically the Chinese cultural disposition and sensibilities. So the Chinese, as a culture, had a kind of abhorrence of anything transcendent. It was a very 'this world,' tangible kind of emphasis, very different from the Indian sort of thrust, or what was quite popular in Indian spiritual circles, Indian philosophies, and I would say the Pali Canon -- this kind of transcendent thrust.

So that was very, very different to the Chinese sensibility and world-view. And they basically utterly rejected the transcendent thrust of Pali Canon Buddhism. They just shaved it off. Related to that, they rejected the teachings of rebirth, or it's very, very much downplayed, partly because the Chinese culture really emphasized and placed a lot of importance on the ancestors -- one's personal family ancestors, and praying to them, and respecting them, and honouring them. You can see that if you have many, infinite rebirths, who your ancestors are end up just being everyone, as the Tibetans teach. And your own individual ancestors -- it just gets lost in this sea of an infinite amount (actually, an infinite to the power of infinite amount) of ancestors.

So when the so-called Dharma meets a new culture, there are all kinds of tearings-away, influxes, reinterpretations, as I said, bringing needs, dispositions, assumptions to whatever is received, and changing it. And the same is true of the West. Inevitably, it's part of what goes on. It's part of what must go on. It's unavoidable. We cannot, you and I cannot step out of our own cultural Weltanschauung, world-view, self-sense, etc., the way we feel existence, sensibilities. We cannot step outside. You can't step outside of your time in history, really, and kind of 'receive' the Buddhism in some kind of pure way. So we bring to it all kinds of things, some of which we're conscious of, and a lot of it, we're not even conscious of exactly what we're bringing, in terms of need, belief, disposition, assumption, interpretation, emphasis. [26:02]

So again, the modern West, to my view, I'd say it's characterized by complexity and plurality, but also, maybe the dominant, the most dominant world-view is, again, a very non-transcendent view. We believe, a lot of the time, "This is it." Any kind of talk of something transcendent in some way is not popular in the dominant culture -- let's put it that way. And so that shapes a lot of the flavour of the Dharma that then takes root in the West, and what we keep, and what we reject, etc., and what we emphasize. So "This is it, this is it" is a sense that is quite dominant in Western culture. "This is it, this is it. There's nothing more than this. There are not other dimensions, etc. There's nothing transcendent or Unfabricated" -- [that] would be a baffling, baffling concept. And so that "This is it" also tends to find its way into the kind of colours and emphases and teachings of the kind of Buddhisms that tend to proliferate and be popular.

I'm saying this not just for an abstract historical reason, making these points about tradition. Awakening is rooted in a tradition. And 'tradition' means what? What is a tradition? What's involved in our sense of a tradition? And can we kind of be a little more realistic about, or a little more wise, at least, in what actually is involved in a tradition? Because when we see all this about the dependence on the culture, and the breadth, and the complexity, and the plurality of what a tradition is or encompasses -- any tradition is a multi-tradition, full of all kinds of tangents, and contradictions, and borrowings, and influxes, as I said, and shavings-off. Then an awakening is rooted in tradition. What does 'awakening' mean? I heard this question: "What is awakening? What does awakening mean? What does that word mean? People in the tradition talk about it." When you actually realize what's involved in tradition, so to speak, then "What does awakening mean?" might actually become "What can awakening mean?"

"What can awakening mean?", as if there isn't one singular version of it. And because we're actually in a moment of creation in the modern West, as the Dharma comes into the West, and there's this kind of mixing of everything that we as modern Westerners bring to it, intellectually and aesthetically, and in all kinds of ways, "What does awakening mean?" might become "What can awakening mean?" And even more than that, one could say that, if you like, modern Western culture, let's say, but maybe modern global culture, for some people, is characterized as 'postmodern,' in the sense that it's not even that there's one dominant view of even this kind of non-transcendent view. Actually we're characterized by 'postmodern,' which is characterized by plurality and an utter diversity of views and world-views and senses of reality even.

So the whole question around awakening might move, then, from "What is awakening? What does awakening mean?", might move to, or open up to "What can awakening mean? What can it mean?" It's a much more open question. And even beyond that, we might look into, related to what I said earlier, about coming at the question from what it results in. So what does "awakening means X," what does such a view, or such an opinion, or such a way of conceiving of it -- what does that result in? What does this view of awakening result in? What does that view of awakening result in? What does a third view of awakening result in? It's coming at the question from the other end, saying, "What does it result in?" Again, what do I want? Where do I want to go?

Again, having said all this, and not arguing on any kind of grounds of historical accuracy (though I could), but as I said, it's not, for a number of different reasons I think you can probably grasp by now, not that interesting or fruitful, and it seems a little silly to me. So not arguing on a ground of historical accuracy (though we could, I could), and not trying to persuade you, I could outline a trajectory -- let's call it a 'trajectory' -- that is or might be a central strand, this trajectory, in one notion of awakening. Or it might be, if you like, a direction of, let's say, development, or (better) exploration, or discovery, that leads to ... what? Freedom? Freedoms, plural? That's certainly interesting in terms of the sense of self and world that it allows, the senses of self and world that opens up beauty. So I could outline a trajectory that is a central strand, or might be a central strand, in a notion of awakening as a kind of direction, or exploration, discovery, that opens up freedoms, interesting senses of things, and beauties, and more. One strand, this trajectory, among others, which would include psychological and emotional awareness and skill, relational awareness and skill, development of the heart with kindness and compassion and generosity, and all that, some of which will come out of this more central strand.

But one could, again, or I could -- again, not claiming historical accuracy, though that would be possible, not trying to persuade you; just putting out something, a possibility of conceiving -- taking as fundamental, as central to this exploration, the exploration of fabrication, the fabrication of perception, of all perception, of any phenomena. So that means not just the self-sense, but also any object-sense, inner and outer, and time, and space, and all of it. Exploring fabrication through playing with different ways of looking, and that whole direction and thrust of investigation of meditative exploration. And in so doing, if one just stayed with it, and learnt to play with it, and the richness, and the depth, and beauty, and subtlety of it all, and the joy of that play and exploration, one would come to a level. One kind of simple level one would come to is seeing, "Oh, I get this experience of the self as 'just a process' of the psychophysical aggregates, the skandhas, in time." And there would be a certain seeing of a certain level of relative lessening of fabrication.

But one could go beyond that. One will go beyond that, if one kept up this, didn't stop there, and kept exploring this direction of fabrication and unfabrication, playing with different ways of looking, seeing how much they fabricate, and in what ways, and what they fabricate, and how they unfabricate. One would open up to all kinds of perceptions of oneness, different kinds of oneness, and the self being one with that: "I am love. I am awareness," etc. and all of these. One would, eventually, in this direction, open to the Unfabricated. And one would also realize that all dharmas are empty: selves, any constituent of the self, any element of existence, any object, any subject, time, past, present, future, awareness, consciousness, space. All dharmas are empty. One would realize that in this ongoing deepening of exploration. And then one would realize, as I said, making the connection earlier, that all self-views are not to be clung to. Any self-view -- because you realize the radical, thorough emptiness of absolutely everything -- all self-views collapse as objects of clinging to, of believing in as being real: "This is what the self is."

One can go even deeper -- I've outlined this in quite a lot of detail elsewhere -- and to see that even this notion of fabrication, which was the very notion that we started with, you start to see: "Oh, that's empty too," because if time is empty, and the things that are fabricated and fabricating (the elements that are fabricated, and the elements that are fabricating), they're also empty, and the time in which fabrication happens is empty, the whole notion of fabrication starts to crumble as a real notion. And then the whole notion, because the fabricated/fabrication is empty, the whole notion of the Unfabricated is recognized to be empty in a whole other way, a whole other level. And the whole duality between the Unfabricated as something holy, and the fabricated as something unholy -- that collapses. Radical non-duality between the Unfabricated and the fabricated.

And as one goes even more, one sees: because of the radical emptiness of all things, there's no kind of singular way things are. There's no way of looking that one can kind of snuggle into, and adopt, and hold, and say, "This way of looking reveals how things are, the real way things are, what is." There's no way of looking that reveals a final truth of how things are. And with that, one begins, slowly, to realize -- it's almost like, "Oh, that also relativizes all conceptual frameworks." It doesn't mean that any conceptual framework is as good as any other, and I can believe we're all bananas or whatever (I mean actual bananas, like fruits; I don't mean that we're all crazy), that that's as good as believing the sort of more conventional view of reality. But it's more a subtle point that no conceptual framework will reveal the ultimate truth of things. And no way of looking will reveal, "This is how things are. This is finally -- this is the take on things."

And then, on this trajectory, one begins to open up to that really radical sense of possibility. And one sees even deeper: not just the participation in perception, which was clear before with this business about fabrication and ways of looking, but actually the participation in the whole notions of truth, and also in the notions of what awakening is. We participate, or we can participate, and we do participate. There's a whole participatory view that becomes viable as a conceptual framework.

So I could, I have, outlined very briefly a trajectory that might be a central strand, as I said, of one possible notion of what awakening might be, among other strands involved in it that seem very important to me, like psychological, emotional, relational awareness/skill, development of the heart, and generosity, and love. Generosity and love, I would expect to come out of the mettā as well, by the way.

Now, we could say, "Okay, so where do we place the stages in that?" But again, I would just say, why is that important? What's behind the question? What's driving the necessity to place stages there, and map it on this or that, or whatever? So, in that conceptual framework, or my conceptual framework, which may be how I tend to think at the moment, awakening includes ending the inner critic, certainly, freeing oneself from that. It includes, more broadly, healing our psychological wounds to a significant extent. It includes being able to flow with the stream of life. It includes the direction of eradicating the kilesas, and moving in that direction.

Some of these conceptions, as I've pointed out before, they might be quite popular, but when you kind of probe them a little bit, or explore them in actual life, you begin to ask the question, "What does that actually mean, to 'go with the flow'? What does that actually mean, to really eradicate those kilesas of greed, aversion, and delusion?", as I've talked about. And something in those notions begins to kind of lack a little coherence. Nevertheless, they can be helpful as sort of elements to include in the sort of larger direction, or larger conceptual framework. It includes the transformative experiences and perceptions and understandings of onenesses of different kinds, of anattā, no-self, not-self, all that.

But for me, I want to say something further, because it also includes this radical emptiness of all phenomena, and this non-duality that I was talking about earlier. But for me, awakening, though it includes all these experiences, insights, and directions (as much as they are not ... kind of ultimately incoherent), it's beyond all that too. It includes and involves something more. It includes even the seeing that awakening, too, is empty. And that, many Mahāyāna texts are pointing to the emptiness of awakening, the non-duality of nirvāṇa and saṃsāra, etc.

But this emptiness of awakening doesn't mean that we throw away -- for me, it doesn't mean that we then throw away or that we should throw away the concept of awakening, the notion, the goal, the vision. It doesn't devalue it. It doesn't say, "It's empty, therefore it's a lie. Therefore it's just a con," or "It's rubbish," or as someone once said to me, "Ah, we're all stuck anyway. We're all schmucks," or something like that, "in the end." They were talking about a certain spiritual teacher that they had felt disillusioned about. And then they just go on to say, "Oh, we're all the same. There's nothing possible." To me, the emptiness of awakening is not saying that. And that's not what it opens, that realization.

But awakening is empty, and in several different ways. And one of the ways it's empty is that, if it involves what I was tracing in that outline of a trajectory, awakening will also open all kinds of doors, all kinds of possibilities, in many different directions. That whole movement of awakening will open all kinds of doors, gates, possibilities, and many different directions, and manifold, and perhaps even infinite possibilities for ways of looking and ways of conceiving. And it will open for actual use in life, to be engaged, to be lived, to be practised, knowing they are all empty, and at the same time, viable, workable, practicable. This is part of what awakening does, in this vision of awakening. And because there's infinite possibility there, there's not an end to this opening. There's not an end to this movement of opening. It's open-ended.

Just to end. That's a possible trajectory. I offer it as a possibility, again, without trying to persuade anyone or play other games. I just offer it as a possibility. To me, it's a very beautiful possibility: a possibility of doors and gates being opened by this journey of exploration, in this journey of exploration, through this journey of exploration, and that process itself becoming open-ended in terms of the ways of looking and the conceptual frameworks that open. The whole thing just opens up realms and worlds of possibility, of experience and conception.

If I just share something about freedom from suffering and equanimity, something personal. All this business, all this trajectory I've outlined, it's like, "What does that have to do with freedom from suffering?" There are all these different possibilities of views, and kind of maturings of view, or opening up further, to another level, etc. If I just share, for me (and it's only for me), personally, it's not the emptiness of self -- in other words, the insight or view encapsulated in the question, "Who dies?" I'm talking about my relationship with the possibility of dying, and dying an early death, or dying soon. It's not so much that. You might have heard this question, "Who dies? Who dies?", and that kind of question, the emptiness of self that that seems to capture. Or in the view that, at death, there is just the disbanding of this process of the aggregates. It kind of falls apart as a process, this process of the aggregates in time that, kind of stuck together, makes the self. Or the view that the process was all there was, or it is or was self. It isn't, for me, those kind of views that really make a difference, and bring deep freedom and deep equanimity, with respect to the possibility of dying soon, dying a relatively early death.

Even less is it a reflection on impermanence -- just the fact that we all die, and that everything is impermanent, is born and dies. Nor is it or was it particularly the perception, the available perception for me of oneness with nature and oneness with the elements. I remember being struck, immediately after I got the prognosis. I had a CT scan, and the doctor said to me, "You've got a tumour in your pancreas." And I'd heard enough about pancreatic cancer to know kind of what that implied. I remember coming back to Gaia House, and it was summer, and sitting in the walled garden, and sort of reflecting on it, taking it in, digesting that news. And looking around at the beauty around me, and having a possible perception, possible experience, to be able to enter into that way of looking that just saw myself as one with nature, and body at death dissolving back into nature like that, becoming earth, becoming air, becoming water, etc., and energy. And it wasn't that view that was -- it was available, and it was helpful to a certain extent, but it wasn't really a view that brought a lot of deep freedom or equanimity or transformative power to it.

Rather -- and again, I'm just sharing for me -- rather, I suppose I could kind of list four insights that I think really were helpful instead, that kind of have, over the last few years, in relation to this possibility of dying, and this news, and this very real possibility that I am confronted by and live with. Four insights, if you like, four ways of looking, four perceptions.

(1) One is the insight into the Unfabricated -- the sense, the perception of that Unfabricated. But in a way (and this, to me, is important), in a way that includes a sense, a palpable sense of the mystery there, the mystical beauty and sacredness of it. In other words, again, it's something that's functioning in a way that's saying something more than, "It's just that everything's empty." Or it's more than, "It's just this kind of beyond." It's got a soul-element in the mystery that I perceive there and sense there: the deep, unfathomable mystery, and the beauty, the mystical beauty and sacredness of it. [51:02] That perception, for me, makes a huge difference.

(2) Secondly, the related insight or view that knows and perceives the emptiness of everything, of all phenomena, of space, of time, past, future, and present, and the now, of consciousness, awareness, etc. And again, it's not so that you say, "Oh, I see the emptiness," and you realize, "Nothing matters, because it's all empty." It's not that view of or that sense of "nothing matters" that I feel is making the difference for me, the liberating difference. It's rather this realization, this insight, view of the emptiness of all things in a way that makes felt some unspeakable mystery, beauty, and sacredness. It's in the emptiness that there is this sense of this indescribable mystery of everything, everything, everything, and the whole of existence. And that's palpable in that insight way of looking or sense of the emptiness of all things. It's not that everything is empty, therefore everything is kind of worthless, or it doesn't matter. There's some soul-element, some element of mystical appreciation, resonance, beauty. And that makes a difference for me. That's what, when I connect to, that's what kind of cuts through everything. That's what opens it out.

(3) Third insight or way of looking or perspective/perception is -- and I've described this earlier at some point, I think, in the last talk -- the sense, the perception of myself, and my life, and the things and events in my life, and in the world -- the sense, at times, of all of that as image, the imaginal perception of all that, the sensing with soul of myself, my life, and the things and events in it. So it's not a constant perception. It's something I move in and out of. And so, this sensing with soul or imaginally perceiving, with all that is involved in that, as we described in the first talk of this series -- all those elements and aspects of the imaginal, including, as I described in the last talk on "Dukkha and Soulmaking," including the sense in that -- when I sense my soul with soul, there's the sense of the non-separateness from the divine of my personality. And the sense of, in, and through, and as my personality, my individuation, my uniqueness, and even my weirdness, and my particularities, as necessary expressions and fabrications of the divine's unfolding, of the soulmaking of the Buddha-nature, of the cosmic Buddha-nature, of whatever you want to call it, of God. There's this perception of that, as I described in one of those "Dukkha and Soulmaking" talks/parts.

And that also, as I described there, there's a sense then of the timespan of my life, whatever that turns out to be, the duration of my life is itself an aspect of my soul. The time and soul are somehow not separate. And the time given to me or allotted to me, whatever that ends up being, is somehow an aspect of my soul, and my soul is not separate from the divine. In that way, the soul is also, and what is happening in these events, and the time, and all of it is perfect in that strangely indescribable way that I alluded to in that talk. That kind of perception, that kind of way of looking, that kind of opening up of the sensing with soul, of myself, of my existence, of my life, and the events, and the story, and the personalities -- that makes a big difference, a huge difference in terms of the relationship with death, and the equanimity that comes with that, the sense of grace, gratitude, blessing, ease, peace. [56:12]

(4) And lastly, again, related to imaginal perceiving or sensing with soul is when I feel myself, so to speak, 'on track' or devoted to my -- let's call it my 'soul-duty or duties,' which, as we've said, pointed out, they're imaginal perceptions. The perception of duty is part of the imaginal constellation. It's an imaginal perception, which means it's neither real nor unreal. My sense of what my soul-duty is in life, or soul-duties are in life -- it's got that theatre element. It's neither real nor unreal. It's got that imaginal Middle Way. And yet, when I feel myself on track, and devoted, and plugged into that constellation of duties, if you like, that makes a big difference in relation to death.

So I'm just sharing that. We could ask: what insights, what ways of looking make a really radical difference with respect to what matters most? What insights, what ways of looking, if we're opening up this question of awakening (what does it involve, what does it mean, what is achieved there), what insights, what ways of looking make a really radical difference with respect to what matters most? So life, death, personhood -- what matters most? You tell me. What matters most to you? And what insights and ways of looking, etc., make a radical difference and give deep freedom, deep equanimity? So that's a question for you.

But still, even that, you know, in relation to freedom and equanimity, I would still place that in the even larger vision that I outlined, that trajectory and that whole strand, and the other strands that were involved. And I would place even that in a larger vision. And that's the vision of this possibility of a movement of awakening opening doors for us, opening gates of possibility, of perception, of the sense of being, the sense of existence, possibility of also action. And that opening of doors, opening of gates, is potentially infinite and open-ended.

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1. AN 10:92. ↩︎