Body as Space Guided Meditation

Thank you everyone for your practice. At this point in the session, I'll offer a talk that will hopefully give some background context and direction for analytical practices. This talk will be slightly longer than the talks will usually keep at this point in the meetings, although it may vary. Just because we felt that we want to really establish the ground, that means that today we'll probably have less time for questions and comments from your side. The further meetings, they will be very welcomed and this meeting will have some time for that, just not that much. So, this is a part or a way or an aspect of the exploration of emptiness on the path of Dhamma. The path of Dhamma is vast, there are plenty of things involved. There are practices and inclinations towards ethics and generosity, which are actually very important and in a way endless. It's not just something you do and then sort of check. It's endless, it means a lot, it asks a lot and it evolves and becomes more and more rich all the time. There is this kind of work, there is the work around cultivation of beautiful qualities of heart and mind, cultivation of samadhi that has its own path, cultivation of brahma viharas, cultivation of other beautiful qualities of heart and mind, informal meditation and outside of formal meditation. Things like patience and trust and kindness, the sense of depth and compassion, all sorts of things that we can all always enjoy more of. There is working with emotions and one personal journey there, which is an important part of Dhamma these days, even though it's not that emphasized in the Buddha's teachings, it seems that these days in the Western world it is an important part of Dhamma practice. And there is the path of insight or the path of emptiness and the path of insight or emptiness. It has a very significant place, it plays a very significant role and it could sometimes be seen as sort of like, okay, you did everything and now you can also do that. Sometimes it goes in per level. But it does have very significant role, sort of leading from the beginning, really the beginnings of your practice, the beginnings of engagement with the Dhamma, all the way to awakening. And the idea and the theme of awakening is very much linked to the path of insight or the path of emptiness. Of course there is a place for it also on the path of cultivation and samadhi, but primarily sort of it has the closest link to the way of practicing, the way of thinking of insight and emptiness. Again, I should say things in a much more complex way in order for them to be really true, but that's proximity to it. It has some truth to it. When Raul presented the path of insight, he presented the idea that insights are not just something that you get as a result from your practice. You're doing your practice well and you have a fruit of a certain insight. Instead of that, he suggested to think of insight as any way of looking, we can say way of relating, way of being in contact with, way of referring to, way of looking. So, one second, there is a cosplay. Any way of looking that reduces suffering, that takes suffering a little bit out or off from the experience, that drains some suffering out. Any way of looking that reduces suffering. What's the logic there? The logic there basically saying suffering, and we know that this because we're good Buddhists, or not that good somewhat Buddhists. Suffering is leaning or dependent on clinging and craving. So clinging, craving brings suffering. Clinging and craving are leaning on or dependent on a video. A video meaning seeing things in a way that makes it inevitable that suffering will grow from them. So most fundamentally or most primarily, suffering comes from delusion, from seeing things in ways that make suffering grow out of them inevitably. So Rob's idea there was, let's look at experience in ways that allows or actually invites less and less suffering to grow on top of the ground of our experience because we're making the ground less susceptible for the good. So Rob, you're going to take quite a complex, or I don't know if complex, but a rich idea or heavy idea right now and we'll try to communicate it very briefly. You already know it, so it's going to work for some of you. And for some of you, some of you may hear this for the first time, it will mean time to digest. But what Rob pointed to in his teachings about emptiness and especially in his ways of looking approach, to a ways of looking approach, meaning this kind of way of presenting and thinking about insight practice that I've just mentioned. So if you look at experience, internal external experiences, through ways of looking at that reduced suffering. So you look at external or internal experience through the lens, let's say, anicca. And you're making yourself sensitive to change instead of making yourself sensitive to what can I get out of it, which would be the default way of looking for a human being. Or you're looking at your experience from the angle of annata, relating or letting yourself relate to different aspects of your experience as events or as nature or as something that's occurring and is not belonging to or necessarily related to yourself. That would be the way of looking of annata, just as a few examples. So if you're taking these ways of looking, many things will happen, but primarily two important ones. One, you'll suffer much less. Not only in the future, not only in your future rebirth as a deva or whatever, you'll suffer less right now. Especially if you have some skill in it, or honestly only if you have some skill, the more skilled you are, the more effective it's going to be. That's one thing that's going to happen and that's the selling point for the whole Dharma. You will suffer less. It's a good idea. Another thing that one may discover that happens, that the appearance of experiences or let's say the experience itself changes somehow. When there is less clinging towards a certain thought or an emotion or even an external event. If you're looking at something that's supposed to happen or that's happening now and there is some struggle with it. If you attend to this event from the angle of exchanging nature, the perception or the sense of this event will soften, will open up, will change to some extent. It will become less heavy, less solid, less burdening. But that's again coming back to the subjective, objectively or if you look at the event, it will be slightly less built, slightly less fabricated or constructed. Now that's an important thing. Rob starts with this ways of looking approach but then he says, well, if you take something, let's say you take the sense of self, which is an important thing in the Buddhist world. You take this sense of self and it is important. There is good reason why it's an important thing. You take this sense of self and instead of looking at it from the usual perspective of, let's make it easy for ourselves, like the sense of body. You're looking at this sense of body from the usual sense of what's the most pleasure I can get for it at the moment? How can I reduce the level of discomfort from, let's say, through my usual ways of doing it? Let's look at the body as anicca from the lens of anicca. Let's look at the body from the lens of anicca and then look at the body from the lens of it being a manifestation of the material elements of earth and water and space and air and fire. You're looking at the body from this perspective. Every perspective that you look at the body from, if you really apply it seriously, it will create the body quite differently. Your experience of the body will be quite different. And not only that will be different, by the way, it will be sometimes more and sometimes less constructed. Sometimes the body will be very constructed if you have an anxiety attack or something, which I had a long while ago. When there is an anxiety attack, the sense of the body is very constructed. This body hanging out in space against other things, bumping into things, all this. From the lens of anicca, the body is much less constructed, much more fluid. If you keep doing that for a while, then you look at the body and you'll have a clear sense coming out of your insight and out of your practice that this body does not have the obvious reality that it seems to have. What kind of body is the real body? If I look at it from this angle, it becomes like this. If I look at it from another angle, it becomes like that. No real body to look at there. It doesn't mean that the body does not exist. However, it means that it's not as solid or real or one-dimensional or fixed or these kinds of things as it seems to be, as it appears and sensed to be. That will be the ways of looking approach that hints or starting to hint at the emptiness of things. Emptiness of things meaning things being lacking inherent existence. From this perspective, they appear the way they appear and, honestly, they appear as all dependent on the way of looking. All right. Done with that. To support this kind of inquiry or as a complementary or as almost like an alternative path, Rob points to analytical practices. Analytical practices, they work on a slightly different sort of logic. They're taking the thinking mind, the ability of your bright mind, which is one of the gifts that we have as human beings. We have a mind that can make conclusions, that can reach some conclusion and sort of build on that and have some assessment about what is true and what is not true and what is real and what is less real, etc. They have that capacity as human beings through thinking, through logic. Some of the Buddhist traditions, especially the Mahayana tradition or parts of the Mahayana tradition are saying, well, it will be a great change and a great waste not to use that in order to see deeply into the emptiness of all things. Why wouldn't you use that? Of course, there are reasons why many of us as meditators, we have a complex relationship with our thoughts. And some of us may even have the sense or the view that thoughts are what is obscuring or casting a shadow or how do you say, a fog on reality. But the Buddhist teaching does not point and say, well, reality is things as they're perceived in the senses when there is no thinking. That's not really not what is meant by the reality of things from the perspective of emptiness. What is meant is something much more subtle, much more nuanced, much more sophisticated than that. The reality status of things, our naive belief that things are real as they appear to be, is not usually happening mostly in the level of thinking. This does not mean that thinking cannot get us into trouble and that it's not important to get some skill in reducing the weight, intensity and the wildness of thinking. That's a very important skill to have. The Buddha suggested to develop skill in the ways of thinking. But skill in the ways of thinking can also imply skillful use of thinking. So analytical practices. In analytical practices, we basically take our ability to think and using some practices suggested in the tradition, we can think in ways that will lead us to the conclusion that things cannot be as they appear to be. They just cannot be as they appear to be. The way we work with analytical practices is slightly different than the way we usually work in meditation. With analytical practices, first we need to think about them. So you will suggest or will present the practice of parts and wholes, which is a wonderful sort of gateway into the world of analytical practices. And what he'll do there is a sort of demonstration of how to work with them. He will explain them and sort of will try to convince you. And then he'll invite you to do that in meditation. Now, when you work alone with analytical practice, the invitation is actually to do the same. You sit down, not meditating yet, thinking about it. Okay, so next meeting I'll present the practice of neither one or many. So this thing in order to exist need to be either it's one thing or it's many things. Anyway, I won't get into it right now. Although some of you know how much I like to dissolve my clock in many different ways. However, in terms of how to work, I would suggest that you'll take this clock, you'll put it in front of you, not this one, because this one I like, once that I like with this, you put that in front of you and you actually think about the analysis, get convinced. In order for this to exist, it needs to exist either as a one thing or many things and it can't be both for the reasons that I won't explain now. So you're gaining some conviction in that and then you're bringing it into your meditation, maybe relating to the body in such a way, maybe relating to a sound in such a way, maybe relating to the sense of time in such a way. Through the application of the analysis, there will be some sense of unburdening opens. It may be quite subtle and it's usually an acquired taste. Sometimes you'll even get the sense that in the place where there used to be a thing, now there is a sense of void or there is something that's not there. And despite of how it sounds, it feels wonderful. It's great. And your job there is to let yourself really enjoy and absorb yourself in that void, in that sort of emptiness or empty space or whatever, where once there was something and really take that in, kind of resonating with the insight implied. So I'm saying that sort of as a generic way of working with analytical practices. I really meant to say much more. I don't think I will because I'm conscious of time. However, we need recommended for you to read, I think, chapter 16. Did we do that? We thought of that at least. Okay, but now I am. Is that okay that I am? All right. So now I'm recommending you to read chapter 16. We will revisit this chapter during the course. Chapter 16 means chapter 16 in seeing that freeze, the book that was written by Rob. If you don't have the book, it would be good for you to get it. It's a wonderful book. It's not for the course. But it will help you in the course and the course will hopefully help you with the book. It's really wonderful. So worth having it. And in chapter 16, you'll find a few more angles around how to even start approaching these analytical practices in terms of approaches, in terms of what may be hindering this sort of work. And there are invitations there for reflection. So it's worth doing that. Is there any last thing I want to say? Let me think of that for a second. Yes, just to say one thing. It's like seeing the emptiness of anything, or seeing the emptiness of something internal or external, and gaining skill in seeing the emptiness of something really opens a path that allows the practitioner to look at appearances internal, external, knowing their emptiness. And this is the door, or this is the door, a door for liberation through the deep seeing of emptiness. This is a door to this kind of awakening. So these practices may seem kind of detailed and small, and they are, but it's worth the time. It's like you're investing yourself in the details, you're doing the job, and what opens from that is very different than tiny details. All right, enough about that. Thank you very much.