Vipassana Meditation: Day 6 - Morning Discourse

All right,

Guys.

I think it's time we talk a little bit about love.

It's a very important part of the technique.

And as the Buddha teaches it,

It's actually the next step.

It's a continuation in what we're already doing.

As you can probably guess,

He teaches it in a very practical way,

The way he does everything else.

And by the end of this,

We should all have love as a practical skill,

Not just emotion inside of us.

We should understand two words very well by the end of this as well.

The mundane and the supramundane.

The mundane being everything we see,

The objects,

The regular world that we think we know well and understand and take for granted.

The supramundane is the structure beneath that.

The atomic,

The energetic,

The mystical,

Everything beyond our regular level of comprehension.

We may have already started to experience glimpses of the supramundane,

So it's important to address it so it doesn't get swept under the rug,

Even whilst practicing anupana.

And not even,

Actually,

That technique takes you deep into the supramundane if you follow it.

We can start to get glimpses of the bright mind,

Glimpses of things out of the ordinary that we can simply not pay attention to because they're not catalogued within our directory of the mundane.

And what we start to do as we practice,

Collectively and individually,

Is we start to map the mundane,

Map the supramundane,

Map the mystical.

As we go into these experiences that are outside of our regular field,

We start to realize that they're not random,

Chance,

Spontaneous experiences.

They're part of a predictable structure as well.

Everything looks more different and separate in the mundane.

We all have our more individual differences in the mundane.

We may dress differently,

Express ourselves differently than a layer down,

Our personality,

Our character can still be very different.

Then we start to get closer to reality.

Our bodies may be different,

But generally speaking,

We have one head,

Two arms,

Two legs,

A bunch of organs inside,

Pretty similar when we break it down.

And then we get to the energetic structure,

The nervous system of the body,

Even more similar.

And then we keep on going further,

Less individual difference,

More similarity as we go towards the structure,

Towards the supramundane.

And as the Buddha teaches it,

There is a very specific order to what we experience in the supramundane.

Anyone who wants to read his account of it,

Like I said,

Can read the Abhidharma,

Which is his total breakdown of the structure of the universe.

But we collectively have also started to explore it.

So we can approach this as explorers,

As we have contact with the supramundane,

Start to include it into our facets of reality,

Start to be able to compare,

See where the difference lies and where the similarity lies.

And there are a few things that are bridges towards the supramundane.

One of them,

Which may make you happy to hear at this point in the course,

Is pain.

People have been using pain as a gateway to the supramundane for a long time,

Much longer than the Buddha.

The shamans or the people exploring the mystical use pain as a way to enter trance.

We're not using it as a way to enter trance,

But we are using it as a way to generate intensity.

That's what pain does for us.

It naturally fixates us on a thing.

When our mind can tend to be scattered and diffused,

Pain makes us anchor our awareness and focus.

And because of that,

It gives us something to dig into and to unpack,

To be able to understand the constituent parts of.

And as we do that,

We get closer to the supramundane.

Because the supramundane is basically the details.

And so if we can get further into the details,

We get further into the mystical,

Which is the opposite of the way we usually learn it,

That the details of the mundane and then there's this big gap and leap of imagination or leap of spirituality or intervention to get to the mystical.

This technique is the opposite.

As we go deep into the details,

We get to the stable supramundane to be able to experience it at will and not have it come upon us.

Dostoevsky gives a great account of how some of his most painful experiences led him into the supramundane.

Fyodor Dostoevsky,

The great Russian writer,

Wrote about a lot of people attempting to explore life.

His characters are full of life,

Wanting to understand the nature of it through all of their experiences,

Pushing their boundaries.

And he was exactly the same.

Lived a crazy life.

And he was very interested in how pushing the boundaries of your experience can lead you towards the sublime,

The sacred.

And in his life,

He would have epileptic fits.

He was an epileptic for most of his life.

And after every fit,

He would be debilitated for months.

He was a gambler and he would travel around gambling all the money he made from his novels away,

Getting in romances,

Doing crazy things.

And then for three months he'd be debilitated and sometimes have to continue writing his novels and he wouldn't be able to perform properly because of it.

But he said it was all worth it because in the moments leading up to his epileptic fits,

He said he didn't experience them as moments.

He experienced it as an eternity.

So that he would know when a fit was about to happen because he would see the oblique rays of the sun start to enter the room slowly.

He would see the world start to slow down and he'd know that a fit was about to come and he'd feel the presence of God.

And he said that everything that would come after it,

All the debilitation,

All of the damage to his reputation as a writer afterwards for what he would produce in those states was worth it just for those moments of being able to approach the sublime and touch it.

Luckily we don't just have Dostoevsky,

We have the Buddha.

So we don't all have to become epileptics to be able to experience the supramundane.

The Buddha's given us a few very stable bridges towards the supramundane.

The main one is the one we've been practicing,

Vipassana.

But there's another technique,

Metta bhavana,

The technique of loving kindness.

And this is another one of the bridges that the Buddha gives us towards entering a different state of consciousness.

And what it also does for us is it cleans the record between us and the outside world.

Just as we've used anupana to be able to develop clear minds,

Focused minds,

Sharp minds,

And to be able to take those to our total sensory awareness and clean the record of our sensory awareness so we no longer have this unconscious conditioning hiding within our bodies.

We can take Vipassana and start to extend it outwards to everyone in our lives so that we clean the record between us and the external world.

Us and all the things that we've come in contact with and all the lines that still exist between us.

This is how the Buddha teaches love.

As a natural extension of this stable,

Loving awareness that we develop.

That connects the internal and the external.

As we practice anupana,

We focus on the breath coming in and out of the nostrils.

But while we practice vipassana,

It's not necessary.

We can practice vipassana in any condition.

It's simply to perceive life as it is.

So we can do this with the mouth open,

The mouth closed.

But you'll notice as you practice with the mouth open or the mouth closed that there's a difference in the flow of sensations,

In the quality of awareness that we experience as we go into the body.

It gives us access to a more internal state when we meditate with the mouth open.

And we should become familiar with both of these movements and both of these states.

Because as we talked about yesterday,

We want to experience total bodily awareness.

Unless we can go inside and outside,

We cannot experience total bodily awareness.

But we should remember the rule that we talked about yesterday,

Which is that if we start to encounter something that becomes too uncomfortable,

That we don't want to bring up,

Then just come back to the surface.

Come back to anupana,

Come back to focusing.

It's our choice how deep we go and how we use these techniques.

But one thing that we'll find as we start to go inside is that we'll start to find more loving positions within us.

We'll start to develop this stable loving awareness.

Just as we have physical positions in the body we've been moving through,

We're also going to find emotional positions,

Positions that naturally tend towards us feeling specific things.

And for us to practice metta bhavana,

We want to find this stable loving awareness within us,

This feeling of love.

We don't want metta to become a mechanical activity of simply focusing outwards instead of focusing inwards.

We actually want to feel love.

Feel this stable love and extend it outwards.

If we don't feel this,

It's no problem.

Simply don't practice this level of the technique.

Just as if we don't feel clarity and awareness,

We don't move to vipassana.

We stay with anupana.

So if we don't feel this stable love,

Then don't practice metta.

Because we don't want to extend our pain and animosity to other people.

We want to extend our love so we can clear the way,

Clear the way.

One of the sutras that metta is taught within talks about a bunch of monks who are looking for a place to meditate.

The Buddha would often tell his monks to go and find somewhere else to meditate.

They weren't always together as a unit,

As a sangha.

He would say,

Go and find a cave,

Go and find a forest,

Sit down somewhere quiet,

Spend some time meditating.

So this group of monks found a forest next to a village that said they would provide for them.

And they went to be able to meditate in this forest.

But as they sat there and started meditating,

They started to see images of demons,

Decapitated heads,

Floating bodies.

Some of them started to get sick,

Cough,

Sneeze,

Get ill,

Disrupted their meditation and scared them.

So they sat there meditating and they couldn't focus.

They went back to the Buddha and they said,

We found this forest that we want to meditate in but all these spirits and demons keep on coming to us and distracting us and scaring us away.

And he said,

Ah,

That's because you've gone against these demons without a weapon.

So let me give you a weapon.

Let me give you the weapon of metta,

Of loving kindness.

He said,

When you go back into this forest and you sit there and meditate and these demons start to appear to you,

These floating heads,

Simply sit there,

Find love within yourself and extend it out to them.

Say,

May you also be happy.

Whether you're a material being or an immaterial being,

May you also be happy.

Whether you wish me harm or not,

May you also be happy.

Think of what this says.

This says that our love exists at cause and not at effect.

Because if we can sit there and feel love for even the things that wish us harm,

For even demons attempting to drive us out of a forest,

Then our love is no longer reactive.

It's non-reactive love,

Stable loving awareness.

We develop the ability to be able to hold a position regardless of the circumstances.

And as these monks sat there and meditated and sent love towards these images of demons,

The images subsided.

And then they would start to get gifts and lights would light up the forest to help them meditate and it would become a comfortable living environment.

And the story says that these were just images of demons,

That there were forest spirits living inside the forest.

And when the monks moved in,

They were like,

Yo,

Who are all these dudes that were suddenly moved into our house?

And they were trying to scare them away with the images of demons and floating heads and bodies.

And so as soon as they started to feel this love from the monks and they realized that they could coexist,

They started to work in harmony to create this beautiful environment for practice.

So what we're going to do is we're going to find this feeling of love inside of us and we're going to extend it out.

And the way we practice this is we start by focusing on the easiest things for us to love.

Maybe we all have someone in our lives that we love the most,

A relative,

Someone we're in a relationship with,

A friend,

And they can become our object and we start to extend our love to them,

To these people that we naturally feel love for.

And then as we become more stable in our love,

As it becomes a position for us,

We know where it is,

We know what the activity is,

Then we can start to extend it out to people that we're more neutral with.

Acquaintances and then eventually we start extending it out to people that we have a difficult relationship with,

That might bring up uncomfortable emotions,

That we might have painful,

Tense threads still attached to.

And what we do if we can send this love out regardless is we clean this attachment.

Just as Vipassana is like a pipe cleaner where we take this clarity,

This disinfectant through our body and we start to clean the channels.

Meta is cleaning the channels between us and other people.

And just as importantly between us and our perception of other people,

Us and our record,

Our history of events,

Our history of contact with the world and the people in it.

So it's not just some fluffy nonsense that's taught at the end of courses to make us all feel nice.

It's a very practical tool,

A very useful tool and actually a necessary extension of the technique if we want to truly practice.

What does it tell us?

As with all of this,

Authenticity and reality must come first.

First we need to feel love.

If we do not feel love,

We cannot practice meta,

Practice another technique.

Second we need to be able to move to this position at will.

We need to be at cause whilst entering the state of love.

It is not a spontaneous thing that comes upon us that can come and go.

We need to be stable in our love.

And third we need to be able to extend it outwards regardless of what we might meet in return.

Coming back to the Jesus point,

If someone slaps you,

Turn the other cheek.

This is an example of the state of mind of stable loving awareness.

If someone takes your cloak,

Give them the shirt off your back.

Statements from the same mind.

We may encounter difficult memories and difficult feelings as we start to extend this love to people.

Even the people we love the most,

We may have lived a mixed life with them and have mixed emotions.

And as we start to reach out,

These images that show real might start to play itself.

As we encounter this,

This is simply a test.

The same as our unconscious conditioning was a test when we were practicing anapana.

It's a test to see,

Can I maintain this position of love despite the interference?

Or do I need this person to be a perfect angelic being for me to reach out to them with love?

If we do,

Then there's probably going to be very few people in this world that we can love.

The Tibetans,

Beautiful traditional practice,

Have one of my favorite methods to do this.

There's a Tibetan word which means a person,

A type of person,

Rinpoche.

What it means generally is a reincarnation,

Someone who's an old soul that's been born into a new body.

But what the word literally means is precious one.

And so the Tibetans have picked specific people within their culture to be able to handle with care,

To be able to treat as precious.

And what we need to be able to practice this stable loving awareness is we all need our own personal Rinpoche's,

Our personal precious people that we can focus our love and awareness on so that we can enter this state of practice.

We can find this loving emotion.

Eventually it will just become a position that we can move to and we can feel this love.

But it's good to have a touchstone for that that brings us into this state of consciousness.

This technique is also one that helps us really take the practice off the mat.

As we've talked about,

It's all good to develop this consciousness and this ability to meditate while we're sitting here like perfect Buddhas,

Not moving.

But as soon as we get up,

If we allow our consciousness to be at effect,

To be dragged around by all the different emotions and conditions we'll encounter,

Then we lose the practice.

How many times does that happen with a person that we encounter?

Maybe someone who might not be particularly polite to us,

Might not be doing something that we like,

Or simply might not meet the conditions of what we think of as someone that we want to treat well.

And we allow ourselves to lose our practice,

To get thrown off balance.

This technique is the technique we use to be able to maintain our balance and to be able to extend our best to everyone.

May you also be happy.

Whatever you're going through,

Whoever you are,

May you also be happy.

If we can do this,

If we can meet the world with love,

Then we develop unconditional love.

To me,

I had a very hard time understanding this when I was younger,

Because I thought even if I'm in a relationship with someone that I think I love unconditionally,

I love them because of them,

Right?

They are a series of conditions.

They're a series of conditions.

I'm a series of conditions.

And somehow their conditions have allowed my conditions to feel good towards them and about them.

So I couldn't get my head around this concept of unconditional love.

Even a mother,

That mother love,

Loves her child because it's her child.

So that's a condition.

It was only when I started practicing this that I realized fully how to access this skill.

I'd heard others write about it before.

Perhaps one of the best expositions of it outside of Buddhism that I've seen is from Eric Fromm in The Art of Loving.

And he talks about this,

This non-reactive love,

This stable love.

It's a beautiful book.

But Buddha gives us the activity of how to access it.

And how we access it is simply being able to maintain the position of love,

To choose love as an act,

Not as an effect.

Love becomes the cause of our actions,

Not the result of the conditions we've encountered.

And then we can truly love unconditionally because we can bring our love to everything.

It's simply a thing that we choose to shine our light on the world with.

Giving the best of ourselves to the best of others.

Wishing the best of what we have for others as well.

And that's what we'll learn,

We'll learn today.

Beautiful skill.

Again,

We're all going through our own emotional conditions.

And it may not always be possible for us to be able to feel this love.

And if it isn't,

Don't judge yourself.

Simply move to the layer of practice that is the right layer of practice for you at that time.

And then if you can use the practice to enter a state of love,

If you can feel this glowing affection that you want to take outwards,

Then do start practicing Metta.

Start extending it to the world,

To the people in your world.

And we'll do this in a structured way.

I've had a few Rinpoche's in my life.

And like many people here,

Probably like many people here,

My first one was my mother.

As I said,

We had a very hard childhood.

And my mother bore the brunt of a lot of it.

She had four kids,

Single mother,

At times was working four jobs whilst putting herself through university at the same time.

So working very hard to make things better for us,

Despite all of the madness we were surrounded with,

All of the madness inside of us.

But our childhood wasn't all grim and horrible like that.

In the midst of pain,

In the depths of pain,

I would start experiencing these sublime moments as well.

A little bit like Dostoevsky.

And that's what helped me realize that intensity is an entrance into the sublime,

Into the super mundane.

And I remember even being in violent situations and having moments where I would just experience such clarity.

And I would gain access to this philosophical understanding of the moment I was in and the universe that was way above my capabilities at the time.

Just these glimpses of light poking their way into a dark situation.

And a more normal version of that I remember very well because it's the first time I remember consciously starting to understand love and not just feel it.

So when I was seven years old and my mother bought me a gift,

She brought me some sports shoes and she was so happy she came and gave them to me.

And I went to open the box and even before I'd opened the box,

I was disappointed.

Because they weren't Nike's.

They weren't Reebok's.

They weren't Adidas.

They were some lesser brand that as a kid I knew if I walked into school with,

I wouldn't be one of the cool kids.

I'd be one of those kids with some rubbish trainers.

And I said to my mom,

Oh so no Nike's?

And she saw the disappointment on my face.

She saw the way I'd received the gift.

And I saw her.

And I saw the tears forming in her eyes.

And I just saw her sink into herself and feel love for me.

And also realize how I couldn't appreciate that.

In that moment,

It became very clear to me that she was experiencing love and I wasn't.

I was thinking from a purely selfish standpoint.

Thinking about myself,

My life,

The effects all of this would have on me and my ego.

Where she was thinking from a position of love.

Feeling and acting from a position of love.

And I realized the difference between those two positions in an instant.

And I could see it from outside of myself.

And I didn't fully integrate it then obviously.

I was seven.

But it allowed me to realize there was a position other than this position of framing things through my ego.

Through my self-interested ego.

I could step aside and see more clearly.

For Pashana to see things clearly.

I still had my filters in place.

And I realized then that we don't always need to remove all the filters to be able to see clearly.

We can have glimpses of what is possible in an instant.

We can step aside to be able to see reality that helps us know what it would be like when we do remove those filters.

And it gave me that position.

And that's how my mother became my first Rinpoche.

My first precious one.

My object of meditation.

So as we practice now,

Let's do our best to find a Rinpoche.

Find someone who can move us into this position of love.

So that we can find where it is and where it exists.

Because it does exist in our body.

It is there.

And we can access it.

And just like all these other positions we've been moving to,

We can choose to willingly move into the position of love.

And to extend this outwards.

That's what we're going to practice today.

If anyone needs to relax,

Get some water,

Go to the bathroom.

Let's do it now.

And then start again.