THE SIX ELEMENT PRACTICE INTRODUCTORY TALKS - GUHYALOKA '95 DHARMACHARI CITTAPALA SPRING 1996 CONTENTS Foreword 1. Introductory Remarks 2. The What and the How 3. Working in the Practice 4. An Application of Awareness 5. The Objective Content of our Perception 6. The Great Elementary Qualities 7. Space 8. Akasha 9. The Shepherd's Search for Mind 10. The Nature of Consciousness Appendix FOREWORD I gave these talks on the 1995 Men's Guhyaloka Ordination Course. I have now transcribed and loosely edited them; they remain very largely verbatim, and I am keenly aware of their lack of literary merit. Since this project originated from talks, I hope you will bear this in mind and be patient. These talks are based on the unpublished transcripts of seventeen of Subhuti's talks on the same subject, and notes taken from Suvajra's own series of talks similarly based on Subhuti's talks. Obviously it is only to the extent that I understand what Subhuti and Suvajra said that I convey to you something of what they said. Therefore, albeit acknowledging my indebtedness to these men, and Urgyen Sangharakshita, I speak primarily on the basis of my own experience and thinking; any lack of clarity is entirely my own. In arriving at a point where I felt confident to give the talks, I found I had expanded on a number of Subhuti's and Suvajra's themes, and introduced new ones as well, most notably a talk on Akasha. I am very much a beginner when it comes to the Six Element Practice. What I offer here is primarily intended to help stimulate other Order members who take up this practice. I presume that in the future someone with far greater experience will write a much fuller account. In the meantime I wish you much fun and every success with your own explorations. My thanks to all those who have helped in producing these talks. Cittapala Spring '96 CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS 1. Commit yourself 2. Identify expectations 3. Work with hindrances i.. Boredom ii. Fear iii. Distraction 4. Engage creatively 5. Work outside the shrine room 2. THE WHAT AND THE HOW 1. Introduction 2. A simple outline of the practice 3. The three major phases to contemplating an Element i. Analysing our experience both of ourselves and the external world in terms of a particular Element Primary characteristics of each Element - in brief. Engaging creatively ii. Recognising our impermanence iii. Letting go - resting happily 4. Why we contemplate a. Listening, reflecting and meditating b. The Argument The spatio-analytical and dynamic-synthetic approaches. The viparyasas & sunyata 3. WORKING IN THE PRACTICE 1. Introduction 2. Engaging creatively 'Scrap-books' A personal aside Imagination 3. The Earth & Water Elements The Earth Element The Water Element 4. AN APPLICATION OF AWARENESS 1. Introduction 2. Extending our awareness i. How to cultivate mindfulness? ii. Working against the hindrances 3. Cultivating metta i. Equating self with other ii. The poetic dimension of metta 4. The heart's release i. Transforming pride, conceit and arrogance ii. Cultivating non-attachment and equanimity iii. Working with significant examples 5. Conclusion 5. THE OBJECTIVE CONTENT OF OUR PERCEPTION 1. Introduction 2. The nature of our perceptual process i. The mercurial nature of perception ii. Reframing the emotional content of our perceptions iii. A provisional perceptual framework iv. Categorising 3. What is rupa? a. Defining our terms b. Clarifying the meaning of the word 'objective' 4. Conclusion 6. THE GREAT ELEMENTARY QUALITIES 1. Introduction 'Matter' 2. The Great Elementary Qualities 3. The Great Magicians 4. The Magicians' footprints The secondary qualities and their sub-categories 5. Summary i. Educate yourself ii. Look beyond the rational 7. SPACE 1. Introduction 2. Characteristic ways of experiencing space: i. as 'that which is between things' ii. as 'that which contains' iii. as 'that which gets filled' iv. as 'relational' v. as 'an infinite number of perspectives' 3. Getting attached to space 4. Our metaphorical uses of the term 'space' i. Boundaries ii. The boundaries of the healthy individual iii. The individual and the infinite nature of space 8. AKASHA 1. Different cultural perspectives i. Newtonian space ii. Influence of post-Renaissance camera reality iii. The Indian Buddhist perspective 2. What is Akasha? i. Mahakasha The primary nature of Akasha Symbolic associations between Akasha and the mahabhutas ii. Cittakasha: imaginal space iii. Cidakasha Akasha experienced as a higher level of 'being' The dakini 3. Conclusion 9. THE SHEPHERD'S SEARCH FOR MIND 1. Introduction 2. The Shepherd's Search for Mind 3. Outline of remaining talks 4. Vijnana - Consciousness i. It's dualistic character ii. It's momentary nature iii. At the meeting of sense-object and organ 10. THE NATURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS Introduction 2. Citta 3. Mental Events i. The complex interactive nature of the mind ii. Sparsa - sense impression iii. Vedana - feeling iv. Samjna and cetana - interpretation & volition v. Is all this analysis necessary? 4. Manas and klistomanovijnana 5. Absolute Mind 6. Dhatuvibanga Sutta 7. Toward spiritual rebirth Appendix 1. The contemplation of the Six Elements - basic instructions Appendix 2. The contemplation of the Six Elements - long lead-through Notes 1. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS 1. Commit yourself 2. Identify expectations 3. Work with hindrances i. Boredom ii. Fear iii. Distraction 4. Engage creatively 5. Work outside the shrine room Before I describe the basic practice. In casting your structure, form and method of mind back to how it was for the practice, I have some you then and with the benefit introductory remarks. The of hindsight, I'd like you to outline of our activities over identify some working tips, the next week is going to which you can still apply break down into two major usefully today. You can parts. Firstly there is the then remind yourself of them meditation practice itself and as you learn this new my leading you through it. meditation practice of the There are six main stages to Contemplation of the Six the practice. And I have Elements. So please write identified a further seven them down; there's some subsections common to each homework for you! This stage; these come from my own introduction consists in me conception of the practice. taking up a few such tips that I'll be saying more about both have occurred to me. in leading through the meditation and in these 1. Commit yourself afternoon sessions. The First, 'Commit yourself second major part of our to the practice for a specific activities is that I'll be period of time'. It's no good giving a series of talks which thinking: 'I'll give it a try, will last anything from half- and if I don't like it, I'll an-hour to an hour or more. drop out, and spend my time By way of introduction doing something else,' in I'd like you to take your mind other words having a 'dip-my- back to the first time that toe-in' type approach. If you you were taught to meditate at come at it like that, very an FWBO centre, and back to likely the practice won't what I assume to be the work; so you might as well not freshness of your 'beginner's try at all. You do need to mind'. Obviously you are very commit yourself to taking the much further on now, but today practice up for a definite you are in an analogous period of time. It's just the position. Just as you were same as the hard-won then being inducted into the experience of learning to ride first and second great stages a bicycle or swimming. Unless of Bhante's system of you keep going and keep meditation, or stages of the trying, however many times you spiritual path - Integration fall off, you'll never get the and Positive Emotion -, you hang of it. If possible, my are now about to be inducted advice is commit yourself to into the third of those great doing the practice throughout stages: Spiritual Death. And this period right up to the it won't be long before you public ordinations. It's not are initiated into the final a very long period of time, stages: of Spiritual Rebirth and given the overall and Compassionate Activity. importance of this particular In a sense, we are already practice in terms of this preparing the ground for the third great stage of spiritual latter in our evening life, I think it is very well evocations of the Buddhas and worth while taking this Bodhisattvas. opportunity very seriously and Now, you will have learnt deciding, here and now, that certain useful lessons both you are going to do the from those first initial practice, and to give it your experiences of meditating and best shot. from the subsequent years of 2. Identify expectations difficulties, we can do The second lesson which something about them; we can I'd like to high-light comes change our mental states - from the fact that you are that is the purpose of the inevitably going to have practice! There are ways to expectations. So find out deal with the hindrances. what they are. I don't want Just as we've learnt how to to put you off, but I suspect deal with the hindrances in that some of you may not find cultivating the Mindfulness of the practice easy. So don't Breathing and Metta bhavana expect it to be easy, but on practices, in the same kind of the other hand don't expect it way we can learn to deal with not to be! - necessarily. I'm any kind of difficulties that not saying it's going to be come up in this particular one or the other. But there practice. will very definitely be times i. boredom when you'll feel that you'd Remember we can learn how far rather be doing something to engage with our boredom, else. It is as well to expect with our moods. That we get that there will be bored may be a 'good' thing. difficulties. After all Mara The crucial question is how we has a vested interest in not respond to being bored. letting us get to grips with Looked at from one point of the practice in any successful view being bored is being kind of a way. So he is going stalled, as it were, in the to make sure that as soon as 'Gap' between feeling and we start to make any headway craving. The temptation of he does what he can to get in course is to break the the way. deadlock with a fresh cycle of On the other hand, the either craving or aversion. practice can be engaging, Sit with your boredom and find pleasurable and stimulating. a more genuinely creative In fact, if you get into the alternative. We need to learn groove of the practice, it can how to engage our emotions be exciting, exhilarating, creatively in examining the challenging, and extremely reality of our experience. liberating. After all, this This cannot be a mere 'head' being a vipassana practice we affair, but has to be done are engaging in a direct with our heart. assault on our minds, on Find and learn the ourselves. So in a sense it's language of imagination in the last great challenge which relation to this practice. If we could set out on. The we rely solely on the language practice, like most meditation of intellect we will not get practices has a whole breadth far. The language of and variety of different sorts imagination, coming out of a of flavours and tastes, some transcendence of emotions and pleasant and some not so. reason, is usually perceived in terms of 'images'; these 3. Work with hindrances are 'seen', 'heard', 'felt' Inevitably we do and so forth by the 'heart'. encounter hindrances. It's To start with the practice may important to resolve to work feel rather discursive and intelligently and wordy. But the wordiness appropriately with these. For should only be something that instance, you may encounter is there initially. The boredom, fears, or wordiness of my introductions distractions. When we to the practice are attempts encounter these sorts of to stimulate you to set off in the right direction. But is about to go under. That is remember to keep looking at quite counter-productive. The the moon, not my finger chances are that, if we get pointing at it. The practice into that way of working, is, in essence, intuitive and something in our psyche will imaginative in approach rather kick back and there will be a than rational and discursive. deeper reluctance to return with enthusiasm to the ii. Fear practice on another occasion. Fear is a common So take your time, go at the experience coming from practice gently. If you build engaging in the practice. up an enjoyable taste for the This is fine; it may well be a practice, well you will very good sign. If this gradually make progress. It's happens, remember to come back no good trying to crack this to metta bhavana. In other boulder with your fist in one words, come back to the heart- blow, as it were. centre, to being open and alive, and subtle, and warm, c. Distraction and as if there is light Yet another very common coming from your heart. Make experience is being sure that this is the main distracted. No doubt you have centre of your consciousness a variety of ways of working throughout the practice. with distractions already. Certainly early on in learning One common distraction for a the practice we need to keep certain type of person in this returning intermittently to particular practice is that of concentrating on and relaxing intellectualism. What do I into our heart-centre by way mean by intellectualism? The of cultivating metta. This is practise is not scientifically the key. It is no good trying or rationally acute. It has to think our way to insight not been designed with from our head, as it were. scientific knowledge as its We'll just get a head-ache. corner stone. So it is very That doesn't work. easy for those with scientific We don't have to have an backgrounds to pick holes in unpleasant time. For it right from the start. The instance, if we get frightened practice doesn't hold water in we don't have to eye-ball it that way. But that is out. It's quite OK to let beside the point. The go of the confrontation, to practice is not meant to be a let go of the practice and piece of accurate science. So return to cultivating metta. yes, those with logical, and, The important thing to or scientific training may remember is that we are in easily distract themselves by charge, that we can go at our finding all sorts of own pace. And when we feel 'objections': 'yes but ...; more comfortable in ourselves, that's all very well.' We we can return to the Six don't need a Science A level Element practice. In this to know the Elements don't way, we can come to enjoy the necessarily 'make up' the body thrill of being frightened, in exactly the way that the and enjoy a little bit of practice outlines. So put challenge. But we certainly your scientific knowledge on don't have to jump in at the one side and remind yourselves deep end, and learn to swim in of the essential import of the one go. It's pointless having practice. that desperate feeling of sinking, of feeling that one 4. Engage creatively The third lesson that we bound to get little flare ups should remember from our early and reactions. So this can be meditation experiences is what 'very interesting', as we say. of I've chosen to call Our emotional responses give 'Creative engagement and us clues as to where go find involvement'. I have quite a these miccha ditthis, to find lot more to say about this in out where they are lurking. later talks. The essence of They're a bit like scorpions, the practice is clear, they hide under stones. They creative thinking. This is have to be flushed out. They what we're cultivating: clear, don't immediately show creative thinking. For me themselves. But when we do this is summed up in surprise them, up comes their Lawrence's phrase: 'man in his sting, and they're very ready wholeness wholly attending.' 1 to defend themselves. We are cultivating a new Keep up a creative way of being, reorganising dialogue with the practice: ourselves quite radically. engage with the practice in Don't slavishly repeat the terms of your own life in phrases which I use to quite a practical day-to-day introduce you to the practice sense. Again in Lawrence's in much the same way that words, the practice is about people can get stuck on the 'gazing on the face of life, treadmill of 'may I be well, and reading what can be read.' may I be happy' when trying to The practice is to venture cultivate metta. As Lawrence forth to discover the says, it is 'not a trick, or mysterious nature of life, the an exercise, or set of dodges, awe-inspiring magic of it, the or jiggling and twisting of wonderful, unknowable, existent ideas'. We won't indefinable quality which is break through to Insight by inherent to life. merely copying in this kind of In our practise we fashion. We each have to 'ponder over experience, and maintain our initiative. We coming to a conclusion'; no are each responsible for doubt these conclusions are sustaining our own interest, provisional. Perhaps there in sustaining our own process can never be a final of clear, creative thinking. conclusion. Perhaps our So this is a useful pondering cannot be summed up question with which to review in words; that's all well and each session of practice: 'did good. I succeed in some clear, We look at aspects of our creative thinking? Was that experience which we have as a the flavour of what I was up norm taken very much for to? How creatively engaged, granted, taken as being the with a clarity of mind and basic building blocks of life; perception was I?' we look at the way that we But creative thinking is order the world, the way that not just clear intellectual we get a sense of our reasoning, it is as much to do identity. And this practice with positive emotional asks us to take a fresh look engagement, and responsiveness at all this, to make a to the skilful. Miccha 'testing of statements on the ditthis don't just come in touchstone of conscience'. terms of ideas, they come as We're trying to look more emotional responses. If we're deeply into the way we assume doing the practice as it is that we experience life. Do meant to be done, we touch on we agree with our normal these, and prod these. We're everyday assumptions with which we make sense of our important. Because inevitably experience? To what extent can in relation to being we speak the truth? independent in the doctrine as Cultivate an inquiring, dharma-practitioners, we need curious mind. We have to to learn to do whatever we really want to know. need to do to keep ourselves Otherwise it is merely a on, as it were, the knife's matter of going through the edge, to keep it sharp. So practice by rote. This this will be a very good practice is a Sherlock Holmes exercise in discovering how to adventure. Sleuth-like we're do that. following up clues as to the I strongly advide you to real nature of things. keep a diary of what happens. Although we've got a few It is so easy to think that pointers, fundamentally it is you'll remember all of what down to each of us to happens. But I suspect you'll creatively use the rough find that your experience is guidelines of the practice to so rich, fertile and full that engage with discovering the it won't be easy to remember. real nature and 'substance' of If you keep a diary it'll help our experience. stimulate your reflections. And then I suggest you review 5. Work outside the shrine your diary regularly. Every room two or three days, go back and Given the nature of read what you've written; see meditation in general, and the whether there is any more to particular Insight character be drawn out, any threads to of this practice, to really be followed up, and so forth. make progress we need to Comment on the trends, and devote not only time to the make resolutions in relation formal practice in the shrine to what is going on, and keep room, but also we need to the resolutions! In this way follow it up outside of the you'll make sure that you are shrine room. Are we going moving forward in the practice through the motions of leaving all the time. the practice at the shrine- You may need also to do room door, returning to it some background reading. If once every twenty-four hours, you are the kind of person who or are we practising has that kind of a mind. throughout the day, throughout Actually you may have to do our daily lives, learning to this from a number of points see ourselves and our worlds of view. If you are a bit through different kinds of dull and sluggish, you'll perspectives? The purpose of probably need stimulating. Or the meditation is after all to the other hand, if you have an bring about a radical, and intellectually sharp kind of eventually permanent change in mind, you may need a bit more us. than what I am giving you in So to help us in this we these talks to satisfy you. need to reflect on how we are If so, you'll need to be actually getting on in terms careful that your reading of the practice. We're not doesn't distract from the main going to be having meditation purpose, taking you off down interviews to prompt us. garden paths, which although There won't be that making us interesting and productive in to think or reflect over what their own way, are not is happening. We going to fundamentally helping you to have to do this each for engage more deeply with the ourselves. This is very practice. And above all, keep reflecting over your everyday activities in the kinds of way that I'll be trying to stimulate you to reflect in the formal practice. Use the commonplace experiences of everyday life to flesh out and enrich the practice. So when you are brushing your teeth, for instance, notice what it feels like to have that hard bristle pushing up against your soft gums. That is the feeling of the Earth Element in your mouth. Notice what happens when you are eating a particularly lumpy piece of bread? You can feel the Earth Element crunching around, and you can feel it turning into liquid in your mouth. These sorts of everyday experiences are the raw material of reflections, and upon which you can be reflecting as they are happening. Lastly actively engage in the process of questioning. You can write questions down for yourself, and then set about answering them yourself. Please also write them down and pass them on to me. In this way, I can incorporate your concerns and developing interests in these talks. 2. THE WHAT AND THE HOW 1. Introduction 2. A simple outline of the practice 3. The three major phases to contemplating an Element i. Analysing our experience of both ourselves and the external world in terms of a particular Element Primary characteristics of each Element - in brief. Engaging creatively ii. Recognising our impermanence iii. Letting go - resting happily 4. Why we contemplate i. Listening, reflecting and meditating ii. The Argument The spatio-analytical and dynamic-synthetic approaches. The viparyasas & sunyata 1. Introduction stages to the contemplation of In this talk we are going each Element; we will find to look at what we do in the that we repeat the seven practice, how we do it, and stages of contemplation six why we do it. In doing so, times in contemplating the we'll explore something of sequence of all six Elements. background to the nature of 1. Experience as contemplating, and the nature vividly, and imaginatively as of the six Elements possible the Element in your themselves. First of all, bodily experience: 'In my body we'll run through the basic is this Element 'X', typically outline of the practice including:' If we approach itself, to remind ourselves of this stage in a very the brief instructions that stereotyped manner, merely are given during the formal repeating a formula, nothing practice by way of an much is going to happen. So introductory framework. I it's important to bring the shall be making some brief experience of the Element very comments as we go through each much alive, and strongly feel section. its presence within our bodies. And of course this 2. A simple outline of the approach applies to the next practice stage. The Contemplation of the Six 2. Recognise as Elements colourfully and richly as Preparation: possible the same Element in a) in everyday life give the external world. This sustained attention to a means we have to really look variety of personal at the world around us. We experiences of the particular have to learn how to look. Element(s). We'll look at And then, Recognise that your this later on in this talk. experience of the Element b) before starting the within your bodily experience contemplation, generate strong and in the external world are metta, and positive emotions. essentially the same: 'In the I hope the importance of this external world, this Element is clear. It is crucial. The takes a variety of different first four stages could be typical forms, and this is, seen as an extension of the for example, ... how I general requirement of experience them. The Element cultivating positive emotion. in my body has the same This is because as the next characteristics as the Element section says, we 'experience outside it.' This is an each Element as vividly and important equation to make: imaginatively as possible'. I the experience of the Element have quite a bit more to say within our body is essentially on this in the next two talks. of the same character as that The practice: outside of our body. The We then contemplate each Element will invariably have of the six Elements in turn, different forms; for instance, starting with Earth and we are not volcanoes or progressing through to hurricanes, but we do Consciousness. With each experience warm liquids and Element we follow all seven air within us. Then, stages of contemplation, 3. Recognise that the outlined below, before we move Element in your body comes on to the contemplating the from the Element outside it: next Element in the sequence. 'I experience the Element in In this way there are seven my body coming from the Element outside it in these temporarily borrowed this various ways:' Element; though constantly 4. Recognise that the coming and going within my Element in your body is experience, it is not to be constantly returning to the relied on for security, as a Element outside it: 'I safe refuge, so I let go of my experience the Element in my preoccupation with it and body constantly returning to possessiveness towards it. I the Element outside it in give up my sense of it these various ways: ' We get belonging to me, of my feeling a sense of being like a on- that it is essentially 'me'." going stream of energy flowing We'll be covering this later ever onwards. And then, in this talk. So then, 5. Recognise that when lastly, you die the Element in the 7. Relax, confidently body will finally go back to enjoying and appreciating your the Element in the outside experience of the Element as world, never to return: 'When it comes and goes; letting go I die the Element in my body of it, giving it up, and will finally return to the becoming free of attachment to Element in the world outside it. We are not denying that it.' This is really quite the Element is there, and that straight-forward: we do not we have an experience of it. have ultimate ownership or But we are trying to come into control over the Elements; we, a new relationship to that if you like, just borrow them experience. We are changing for a short period of time. the way in which we organise Our death really does make ourselves in relation to our this point emphatically. In a experience; although of course sense, we're more an this will, in a sense, also expression of the Elements, change the nature of our rather than being in experience as well. possession of them and manipulating them at whim. 3. The three major phases to And then, contemplating an Element 6. Recognise that there As will be clear from the is nothing in your experience outline above, when we of the Element with which you contemplate any one of the can permanently identify and Elements, there are seven that therefore you can have no stages which we follow. Here, permanent control over or to give an overview of what we ownership of the Element: are doing during the "There is nothing in this contemplation, these seven Element with which I can stages will be subsumed under permanently identify, and three main headings. We will therefore call 'I' or 'me'; now look at these three neither can I really say that headings in turn. I possess it or ultimately control it; it is not 1. Analysing our experience fundamentally 'mine'". It is both of ourselves and the not a matter of merely saying external world in terms of a this to yourself; you have to particular Element. really experience this deeply. We start our Look for this 'I' that we all contemplation with identifying think we are; have a really the characteristics of the good search for it. Perhaps Element under consideration. you'll find it! But I suspect For instance, we may recall you'll have a hard job! And that the Earth Element is then consider: "I have only essentially all that is resistant and solid. We fingers through your hair, or identify the Element's if you stub your toe on a characteristics within our own rock. All of these different experience of our self and in everyday experiences flesh the world around us. And we out, so to speak, our actual identify how our experience of experience of the Earth ourselves is made up of a Element. In any of these continuous flow of the experiences it's important to Element, as it were, passing identify the actual feelings, 'through us', coming into us, and sensations rather than going out of us. It is having an abstract notion of extremely important that we the experience. don't intellectualise this, but get a genuinely Primary characteristics of experiential feel for each one each Element - in brief of these experiences of the What are the Elements. We need to feel characteristic sensations of this as much with our hearts the different Elements? We'll and imaginations as our look at these briefly. The intellects. Earth Element is the These Six Elements make experience of something solid, up our experience of ourselves resistant, firm, and and our conditioned mundane substantial; we often world. This practice is associate this with the deliberately structured to be experience of dryness, but in simple, to appeal to our fact the Earth Element is not practical, down-to-earth, always conterminous with the common sense appreciation of experience of dryness. truth; it isn't at all Stubbing our toe is actually a metaphysical about the nature good example of bumping into of the elements, certainly at the Earth Element. this stage. We accept the The Water Element is Elements at the level of everything fluid, liquidy, relative truth. It has to be flowing, soft, cohesive, that said that Earth Element is coheres. The Water Element is much more readily accessible often associated with the than say the Elements of Space experience of wetness; but or Consciousness. There is an again, this is not inevitably increasing subtlety to the the case. A good example of Elements, which is the Water Element is standing increasingly more difficult to in a waterfall: that soft, identify even on this common gushing flow all around. It sense level. is not that water is purely I stress that its very the Water Element; the Water important to bring to life Element is the experience of each Element in terms of our liquid both internally and actual experience. We have to impinging on one from the go out of our way to really outside. Surfing, having a feel each Element. This is hot bath, drinking a cup of why the practice is structured hot cocoa, or the squidgy, as it is. For instance, feel even slimy feel of washing up the weight and resistance of liquid in ones hands, or olive your body as it is sitting on oil in ones mouth are all your meditation cushion; that examples of experience of the is your actual current Water Element. experience of the Earth And then, the Fire Element. And there are all Element is radiant energy. We sorts of examples such as experience heat, or its this: you might run your absence, that is temperature. There are all sorts of ways in thick head feeling on getting which we experience the Fire out of bed after a bad night. Element. For instance, there And then gradually as is the heat rising up off the everything starts to come back baked earth on a hot into focus, we begin to feel a afternoon: we can feel it bit brighter. That change is drying us out, we can feel the the experience of the Element skin on the back of our of Consciousness coming into shoulders beginning to fry being. under the hot sun. Obviously there are The Air Element is even deeper and deeper levels into more subtle. The Air Element which we can penetrate each of is not just air. When we feel the Elements to discover air going in and out of our their, so to speak, essential noses that is certainly the nature; actually they don't experience of the Air Element. have an essential nature - But the Air Element is more they are empty (sunya) of all than air in just that simple substance. But to start with sense. It is vibration, we should stay with our very simultaneous multi-directional obvious down to earth, motion. We infer the activity everyday, practical of the Air Element at work experiences of each of the when we see incense or smoke Elements and work from there. twisting up in the breeze - The Elements are not so its moving in all directions, discrete and separate as the moving in different patterns. practice suggests at first It's a much freer expression sight. In other words, I know of energy than any of the that when air is inhaled that previous Elements. some of it is absorbed into The Space Element is that the blood stream. And, which contains the other strictly speaking from a previous Elements. But it is scientific point of view, it not just Newtonian space; it is oxygen that comes in and it is much more than that. To is carbon dioxide which goes describe just what is meant out. But the practice doesn't becomes increasingly need to be informed by that difficult. An appreciation sort of knowledge. Yes, it is of the subtlety of the Space true. But the fact is the Air Element requires a Element is given back in some considerable subtlety of form or fashion, in one way or perception. And the same another, eventually. And that applies to the Element of is the crucial point. It is Consciousness. Consciousness important that you get a sense is awareness; it is that which of where the practice is illumines experience in the heading: our bodies light of knowing, rather like incorporate the Air Element, the way that light lights up it is an expression of it, the the darkness. When we turn on body takes the Air Element up a light in a dark room, we into it. The body is doing then see things we could not this all the time, and its see before. It's like that. giving the Air Element back And there is an 'objective' & all the time. Just as air is a 'subjective' pole to this coming and going from our experience. We'll be lungs all the time, likewise exploring these subjects much the Air Element is literally more fully later in this flowing in and out of each of series of talks. An example us; we are an expression of of a lack of consciousness, of the Air Element. losing it, is that groggy, Engaging creatively with deeper levels of meaning The Elements are the and significance. primary qualities and If you find that the way characteristics of our sense the practice is being experience, which we have presented causes you chosen to call by these terms intellectual problems, sort 'Earth', 'Water' and so forth. them out. Even reword the We put symbolic labels onto practice; find a way that does these key categories of actually work for you in terms experience. The labels are of getting a strong entirely appropriate: if we experiential feel for each of want to describe solidity and the Elements. It may be that, resistance, then the term for you, there is some better Earth is an excellent way of way of working your way into pointing to what we mean. But the practice. Here, an we can find in going through important assumption to bear the practice that, when we use in mind is to come to the the word Earth, we only think practice as the second and of the soil and the ground we third stages of cultivating stand on and so forth. It is Wisdom; this means being not that we should not think intellectually convinced at of these very obvious least to some considerable examples, but we should also extent. If you are still be aware of the experience of skeptical of the terms in the Element Earth in other which the practice is ways as well, even in more conducted, then you need to be psychological terms. This is still at the first stage, not an ontological view. It srutramayaprajna, of listening is quite easy to get confused to and investigating the by this. So we need to bear language of the Dharma. When in mind which level of you take up the practice, and discourse and experience we practise contemplating in the are attending to at any one true sense of that term, what time. And of course with you are doing is taking your familiarity, we get used to intellectual conviction referring to a number of deeper, finding deeper levels at the same time. emotional equivalents and In explaining the connections to inform and practice I encouraged you to enrich and vivify your 'experience the rocks and the intellectual insight and soil'; so go out and get some understanding. We are intent of the actual stuff in your on turning intellectual hands: study the experience so conviction into insight. that it is vividly in your We need to beware of mind. And in doing so, attend making our observations too to the increasing levels of complex on the one hand; we subtlety of the experience. also need to beware of making Feel the physical resistance them too simplistic. There's and solidity in the very much a middle way to be experience; and then, go explored. On the one hand, we further than just the physical have to look much more deeply sensation in a way which gives into the subtle and rich you a real heart connection nature of our experience, with the psychological and looking beneath the surface of even spiritual experience of our experience, asking resistance within our questions, thinking things experience. In this way, the through. But, beware of physical experience can come falling into philosophising to act as a symbol resonating and abstracting. On the other hand, we need to approach the do so in a relative sense. practice with a simplicity, Obviously we each have a body: directness and faith in the this is my body, that is your archetypal nature of the body, that is his body; this symbols. Some people have body belongs to me, yours to more precise and complex you, and so on. Nevertheless, minds: they have to get it all the point is that our exact. So they have to be experiences of the Six careful to not turn the Elements are actually very practice into a discursive much more fluid than we system of philosophy. Since usually tend to think of them the practice is poor as being. So this is what the philosophy, to do so is to get practice is aiming us to distracted. Take my way of acknowledge: "Look at your leading as an indication, and experience, it is much more pointer to the way to work. fluid, much more Also beware over-simplifying. insubstantial, than you really These remarks conclude my interpret it as being. Can introduction to the first you really find anything in major aspect of contemplating what you actually experience an Element. There are two of the Element which is really further major aspects, which essentially 'you'?" The fact take the practice to its is that we just cannot conclusion, and which we will identify in any genuinely now come to in turn. It is satisfying sense such a thing. very important that we do The main thing to realise is practise this first aspect that there is nothing in the thoroughly, because it sets up totality of our experience the context, the base of the which remains with us all the pyramid as it were. We need time and which could therefore to have a very vivid, rich and be an inherently lasting colourful sense of each of the source of identity. Six Elements in terms of what And furthermore we see we actually experience. It is that these experiences of the only if we have this that we Elements cannot be owned, can go on to see them more for possessed, or ultimately what they really are, and in controlled. Obviously, in a doing so let go of our sense, the experience of the attachment to them. Water Element inside you is ii. Recognising our inside you, its not inside impermanence anyone else. It's your In the second major phase digestion, your food, you are of our contemplation of an building it up into your body Element we recognise that we and so forth. But these label our experience, that we experiences cannot be held put concepts on it, somewhat onto; these experiences flow necessarily and usefully, but onwards. We really have very usually in such a way as to little control over such cause us pain; the pain comes things. It's much more that from being misled by them. they happen to us. Our And in particular this phase organism is a temporary coming- of the practice involves together of these Six recognising that, within our Elements. Even with a experiences of any one of the scientific analysis we come to Six Elements, we cannot find see that something as anything with which to apparently substantial as our identify in a permanent way, bones are, in fact, going anything to call 'me' or 'I'. through a cycle of constant That is not to say we cannot change. We're a bit like a tree growing. We can be of the Bark-garment: lulled into a sense of 'Then, Bahiya, thus must permanency. But we are, in you train yourself: In the fact, constantly changing, seen only the seen, in the just as speeded up films of heard only the heard, in the growing plants show how imagined just the imagined, in dynamic plants are. the cognized just the A famous saying of cognized. Thus you will have Buddhagosa strikes an no "thereby". That is how you appropriate note for this must train yourself. Now, phase of the practice: 'No Bahiya, when in the seen there doer of deeds is found; No one will be to you just the seen, who ever reaps their fruits: in the heard just the heard, Just bare phenomena roll on - in the imagined just the This view alone is right and imagined, in the cognized just true. No god, no Brahma, can the cognized, then, Bahiya, as be found, No maker of this you will have no "thereby", wheel of life; Just bare you will have no "therein". phenomena roll on, Dependent As you, Bahiya, will have no on conditions all.' "therein", it follows that you will have no "here", or iii. Letting go - resting "beyond", or "midway between". happily That is just the end of Ill.' 2 The last major phase of I take this to mean in contemplating an Element is part that we tend not to have letting go of our a freely appreciative, possessiveness of, and our unconcerned relationship to identification with the our experience. Instead, we Element. And in doing so, we normally interpret the allow ourselves to experience elements of our experience in the Element in a less ego- or terms of a dualistic self-orientated, self- distinction, for instance, in referential, self- terms of a 'me' and a 'not- interpretative, appropriative me', of a 'in-here' and 'out- manner; we let go of our there', and so on. In setting craving, grasping, and up this dualistic structure of attachment; we no longer look interpretation, all sorts of for security and refuge in distinctions take on a reality this mode. We recognise all much more substantial than is these tendencies within actually the case. Within ourselves, that we tend to be this structure there are two very preoccupied with crucial reference points or different aspects of our poles, the subjective and the experience as they relate to objective. All our experience us, as to how they effect is defined in relation to this 'me', and being 'mine', or dualism. This is the 'not-mine'. Instead in the interpretative filter through practice we relax into an which we view the world and easier, freer, appreciative, our lives. Consequently this unconcerned relationship to is the self-referential our experience, one which is viewpoint, which has the less self-concerned. In this emotional follow on of way, we enjoy and appreciate craving, grasping and strong our experience simply for what attachment. it is, allowing it to flow past and through us. This is 4. Why we contemplate one interpretation of the famous quote from the Udana of i. Listening, reflecting and the Buddha's advice to Bahiya meditating. The practice is called can do this. The Contemplation of the Six Firstly, 'The Circling Elements. We practise Wood Pigeons'. Here we set cultivating Insight via the about discovering connections, Threefold Path of Wisdom: images, metaphors in perhaps listening, reflecting and quite an associative manner, meditating. Our purpose is to perhaps 'brain-storming'. work our way through each of Secondly, 'Becoming The the two earlier stages towards Bamboo'. This involves the goal of an unmediated learning via imaginative meditation upon the nature of identification with that which the Six Elements. To reach is outside ourselves. For these purer heights of instance, we may spend some contemplative thought, we time wondering what it is like necessarily will have had to to be an ant, watching one go have worked a lot at the prior about its life in the long ant stages of listening and trails on the ground, and so reflecting. on. We try to make the All that was said about imaginative leap and seeing reflection in my talk things from another, even 'Listening, Reflecting and radically different, point of Meditating' applies here. I view. shall briefly recapitulate Thirdly, 'The some of the main points here. Kingfisher'. This is where we First of all we learn to look, engage in intuitive listening: to pay close attention to our diving immediately into the experience; we do so in the heart of the matter, like a terms of the primary kingfisher dives into the pond distinctions of six-fold to catch a fish. analysis which the practice Fourthly, 'The Squirrel'. enjoins. We identify the This refers to how squirrels Elements of Earth, Water, run up and down the branches Fire, Air, Space and of trees; this is a metaphor Consciousness in terms of our for following the branches of actual experience, and we also logical analysis. develop our intellectual Fifthly, 'Socratic understanding of this six-fold Dialogue'. Based on our analysis. The latter will actual experience we involve studying the relevant investigate the categories of texts, and listening to talks our thought and tease them out such as these. a bit more, challenging the And then, after a certain basis on which we tend to amount of this kind of interpret the world. preparation, we reflect deeply Sixthly, having gone on the nature and significance through all these sorts of of our actual experience, different types of reflective perhaps reflecting in the ways processes in relation to the I suggested in my talk, and Six Elements, and when we feel which are summarised below. confident to move on, we I'll quickly remind you of cultivate the third level of these. The essence is to the Path of Wisdom. This employ our imaginations in sounds deceptively simple. We effecting a synergy of our just sit meditating on a intuition with our capacity to particularly pertinent aspect think, both associatively, and of experience, such as the with directed thought. I nature of consciousness. I coined, borrowing some of likened this to dropping Padmavajra's metaphors, six pebbles, the essential points, over-lapping ways in which we the pith instructions into the relaxed, purified, lucid, calm reorganised our self to the pool of the mind. point that we experience and As an aside, sraddha is see things from this Insight. said to be the great water- A permanent restructuring of purifying gem; this points to our being comes about. the importance of the heart. So this is how we set Sraddha, being the about systematically quintessentially positive cultivating Wisdom. I hope I mental event, purifies all have communicated something of those other mental events with the colourfulness and which it is associated. This vividness of the process. is likened traditionally to It's not like a dry tough when a purifying gem is put ship's biscuit, which is hard into some cloudy water, it work to masticate. I'm dispels all the cloudiness. talking about the taste of a In the same kind of way, delightfully rich fruit cake, sraddha associated with this wet with brandy and delicious reflective activity brings liquors soaked into the fruit, about lucidity and calmness. a mouthful of lusciousness Into this kind of mind, we which we can really enjoy. I 'drop' the distilled essence, hope you'll bear this in mind so to speak, of our as we move on now into the reflections. next section of the talk, It is perhaps a bit like which explains the background repeating a mantra: resting in from which this contemplation this state, we can say to our of the Six Elements comes. self over and over again, for instance, 'Earth ... Earth b. The Argument ...' And because we have such An important background a vivid background of for this section of my talk is associations with such a term, 'The True Nature of all images come to mind, and Dharmas', Chapter 1 section 12 intuitively connections are of 'The Survey of Buddhism'. made. One traditional image The Six Element practice likens this process to a knob engages in a two-fold attack of butter dissolving into hot on our greatest delusion: the broth. The hot broth of the notion of an independent mind melts the solid butter of unchanging reality of self the distilled essence of (attavada) i.e. our delusion reflection, and gradually the of our self as being noumenal butter melts, seeping out and or, having a 'fixed, permanent permeating the broth. In a and substantial' nature. This similar fashion all the words is our fundamental miccha and concepts and early stages ditthi. This is what the of reflection are integrated Buddha was concerned to get us and absorbed. to dig out. And this is what Eventually words are no we should use the Six Element longer needed; our minds can practice to do. This wrong be focused directly to the view is the tap-root of our unmediated experience of a being: 'amongst all the particular Element. On the complexity of my brain etc., basis of this comes a deeper there is a permanent "me" knowledge, we become 'one with somewhere here.' it'. Rather than our Our delusion is two-fold. knowledge being something On the one hand, we believe separate, with a sort of that there is a permanently object of knowledge outside of indivisible and irreducible us, it becomes something part 'atomic' essence to our self. of us; we will have We have a sense that there is this 'thing' which we call that we distinguish our sense- 'me' which is, as it were, a impressions into what we think kind of 'lump', or 'bit', of as being 'in here', and which is located somewhere, in label as 'me', and what think our brain perhaps, or guts, or of as 'out there', and label heart, or it's just hovering as 'not-me'. What naturally somewhere around us, being follows is the distinction of either physical or 'mine' and 'not-mine'. This incorporeal. Or we may have a is not merely a cool, rather more sophisticated impartial, analytically rationale for 'it'. The cognitive process; there are second aspect of this wrong strong emotions involved too. view is that we are convinced We become possessive and that this thing, that we call deeply emotionally engaged 'me', is the source of its own with what is 'mine', feeling energy and life; it is self- very strongly that there sustaining, maintaining its really is a 'independently and own life-force. In other permanently existing me' and a words, we believe that 'me-which-has-things'. There fundamentally it is not are 'things which belong to conditioned, that it is not me' and 'things which don't dependent on anything else. belong to me'. In attacking this two- From an Enlightened fold delusion Buddhaghosa viewpoint, this interpretation defines dharmas as being, is 'wrong'. In other words, firstly 'without-permanent- albeit relatively 'true', this essence' (nissata), and view is ultimately false; it secondly, 'not in themselves is an illusory way of relating the source of their own life- to, structuring and energy' (nijivata). In interpreting our experience. conceptual terms, the purpose It's not that it is completely of the Six Element practice is wrong; it's not that there is to cultivate this right view. nothing there at all, that we So what is the basic don't exist in any sense conceptual argument employed whatsoever. What is wrong is by the practice? We can come the way in which we relate to at this question in a whole our experience. Structuring number of ways. So what our experience is an essential follows is just one of these. process within developing self- There is a chaos of sense- awareness. What we have to impressions pouring in through become increasingly aware of all our different sense doors is that such structuring is all the time. We have learnt just a device, a tool, a to interpret, and work up our useful means, a system of experience of this chaos of metaphors, which can help us sense-impressions into a to be more aware. We tend to coherent, logically water- forget this and take our tight, rationally satisfying interpretations far too picture; it is an apparently literally. stable and convincing picture For example, we call a of an objective world and certain rock in the middle of ourselves in relation to it. the Guhyaloka valley The Hand, Consequently, we have a vivid because it looks very much sense of a self and a world, like a hand thrusting itself all being organised in terms up out of the valley bottom. of time and space. But of course, the majority of A particularly people when they first come to fundamental characteristic of Guhyaloka probably don't think the way we view our world is of this rock as The Hand. It is only when it is pointed out situation which prompts us to to them that they see it in have this sort of response? that way. Unfortunately, Or, for instance, how do we there is a tendency after a feel when we get ill or when while to see it exclusively we start to bleed? All sorts like that, to forget that of feelings come up in there is more to it than that relation to these experiences particular hand-like shape. which are much more to do with We need to be careful the way in which we are that we don't come to see the emotionally attached to the categories by which we basic constructs of our interpret our experience in experience than what a more too fixed and substantial a detached understanding would kind of way. We see 'things' bring. Or, for instance, what as being separate from one happens to our mind when we another. It's not that they get very cold? We can get very are not, but it is not that tetchy. This sort of they are separate either! experience points to how There is a middle way between dependent we are on really the two interpretations; our quite finely tuned parameters language tends to fool us into in relation to who and what we thinking that they are more think we are and how we define substantial and distinct than ourselves. Another example is they actually are. Language 'our space'; for instance, if structures our experience for someone is sitting in our us in a very useful way. But chair, or gets a little bit then we tend to get hood- too close to us or something winked by the categories of like that, we can feel a bit our language. as if we're being crowded out, The Six Element practice that we can't breathe. We attacks over-literalism, just don't want to have some particularly in relation to people so close to us, and yet what we regard as 'me' and others we can't get close 'mine', our sense of identity, enough! who we are, and what we think These sorts of experience defines us. All this may tell us something about how we sound quite simple and go about making sense of straight-forward on the ourselves in relation to the intellectual level. But when so-called objective world that we do the practice in the way we perceive around us. So we are meant to do it, we often we assume that 'that's start to get a sense of the just the way it is', even, depth of emotional attachment 'that's how it should be!' involved in the way we go This practice is getting us to about structuring our world. look more deeply at these We begin to discover how so kinds of frequently habitual often we're very, very touchy automatic responses. It is in relation to basic also getting to us to see that distinctions. our processes of For instance, what do we identification are feel when someone tells us we conventional and arbitrary. are fat or growing bald or We put so much store by these something of this nature? processes. In effect, we go Often our pride is injured; we for refuge to and gain an start to check out the enormous amount of security perception: 'I'm not that fat from our interpretation of the - a little tubby maybe ...' world. The practice is What is it about our getting us to see that in perceptions in this sort of doing all of this we limit ourselves, and others, and is the sum total of these that as a consequence we cause 'bits'. It's not that there ourselves, and others, a lot is something wrong with having of pain. And furthermore the a sense of identity. It is practice is getting us to our attachment to this discover that it is much more identity which is being put pleasurable and satisfying to under the spotlight. So we be free of our attachment to start to become aware of how organising our experience in attached we are to this body, this manner; in other words, and how attached we are to the practice enables us to see experiencing the world as we how we can become our own normally experience it through masters rather than slaves. the senses of our body; we If we can develop this kind of become aware of how attached looseness to our experience, we are to the sense of a 'me', this kind of freedom, we'll and to possessing, and to rise into a very much more liking things, and to not positive state of mind. liking things, and to liking to be in control. And the The spatio-analytic and practice helps us to see how dynamic-synthetic approaches. all these 'parts' do not In the Six Element constitute an essential true practice this twofold delusion nature or an unchanging of attavada is attacked from essence. And we start to two closely related points of realise how temporary, fluid view: firstly, we view and arbitrary these ourselves, as it were, distinctions are within our spatially as objects made up experience, that they, in of so called 'parts.' And themselves, don't really secondly, we consider our define us. It's not that they experience of ourselves are not part of the picture; dynamically and as conditioned it is not that they are by other so called 'things' complete illusions, but we and processes. realise that they are not The first is known as the fundamentally us. spatio-analytic method. In And then, in the dynamic- this respect we are synthetic method we resolve progressively analysing ourselves, as a phenomenon-as- ourselves as phenomena-as- event, into the sum of our fact. In other words, we external relations. We break ourselves down into the analyse our experience in such Six Elements, into six a way as to reveal that we, constituent categories of and the elements of our experiences, or heaps of experience of our internal processes, which reveals our world, do not live or move by composite nature. The their own power; the Six traditional image is that of Elements flow into us, through the manner in which we can us, and back out into the imaginatively take a chariot outside world. It is not as to pieces, collecting it if we have created any of together into wheels, spokes, them; in a sense, we are and so forth. borrowing them from the What becomes apparent is outside world temporarily. that we are attached to the And we also analyse our idea of 'the whole', that experience and the elements somehow all these 'bits' make making up our experience of up something 'more' than just our inner world in such a way the 'bits'. For instance, we as to reveal that they arise are attached to the 'me' which in dependence on a complex of internal and external impermanence, and hence on to conditions, an inter-related our impermanence. In other network of causal connections. words, taking the Elements to Combining these two be empty, to be devoid of any different approaches within inherent, permanently enduring the practice, we come to see substance, we acknowledge that that our experience of they are constantly coming and ourselves and the world is not going. And then secondly, we at all a straightforward work from the fact of our matter; there isn't an constituents' and parts' entirely separate 'me' impermanence to their standing aside from other insubstantiality, and hence on separate 'things'. Instead, to our insubstantiality. In we come to appreciate this way we convince ourselves something of the rich and of the propositions contained subtle complexity of different in the premises! In other types of processes which are, words, that we are impermanent as it were, flowing through because what we are made up of time and space, one effecting is insubstantial; and that we another, and that all of these are insubstantial because what contribute to the experience we are made up of is of 'me'. We come to see that impermanent. the arbitrary, conventional Let me attempt to spell analysis that sees things in this argument out a little simple terms is just that. further. We have no 'own- being', no 'self'-mastery, we ii. The viparyasas and are not self-originated (which sunyata is actually a contradictory Another very useful concept) for two reasons. perspective from which to Firstly, this is because we understand the dynamic of the are compounded; we are made up Six Element practice is that of the six Elements; we are of the viparyasas. The just the sum of our practice involves components, being simply a investigating, at least two, momentary collocation of if not all the viparyasas; we exterior causal factors. And examine how we look for the secondly, since these causal permanent in that which is by factors are constantly nature impermanent, and the changing, we are constantly substantial in that which is changing. The material by nature insubstantial. processes of the body, and In the practice we mental process which make up analyse our experience of the so called 'mind' do not ourselves and the world into belong to us, are not our own the parts, or constituents, or because they arise and change heaps of the four Elements of in dependence on conditions rupa, that is Earth, Water, over which we have very Fire and Air, and also the little, if any, control. Elements of Space and Because these aspects of our Consciousness. When we've experience are impermanent, learnt to do this, which is, they can be taken away from in fact, a bit artificial but us; what can be taken away nevertheless a useful from us is not our own; what analysis, we then progress in is not our own cannot be two directions simultaneously. regarded as our self. Firstly we work from the The exploration of all fact of the insubstantiality these Elements in terms of of our analysed parts and impermanence and constituents to their insubstantiality is primarily a so called Hinayana exercise. of the Elements of rupa, the The Six Element practice also level of conditioned leads naturally enough into existence; then we go on to the development of the first the level of akasha, which is three levels of sunyata, which fundamentally an Unconditioned is of course a Mahayana dharma; and then we see development with the same through the difference between fundamental purpose. the conditioned and Why should this be Unconditioned by working on significant? The experience of Consciousness - if we go sunyata, as spiritual death, through that gateway is said to be a crucial sufficiently deeply then any prerequisite to the organic apparent tension between development of, what Bhante conditioned and Unconditioned has termed, the fourth great is resolved. stage of spiritual path and Investigation of Form Meditation, that is of (rupa), that is of the Four spiritual rebirth. spiritual Elements of Earth, Water, Fire rebirth comes about through and Air, eventually leads to awakening of the Bodhicitta, a an understanding of the progressive communication and emptiness of conditioned re-identifying with the (samskrta-sunyata). Bodhisattva. Hence the Six Investigation of Space Element practice lays the (akasha) eventually leads, via ground for this coming into accessing the fourth dhyana ever deeper communication and state of the sphere of reidentification with the infinite space and Bodhisattva. Only if we have incidentally the third a strong experience of what vimoksa, 'The release called Mr. Chen has called 'the the beautiful (subha)',3 to fires of sunyata', will our an understanding of the sadhana avoid becoming what he emptiness of the Unconditioned says is just 'vulgar magic'. (asamskrta). Investigation of Consequently the third treat Consciousness (vijnana), also stage of the spiritual path via accessing the fourth and meditation, of cultivating dhyana state of the sphere of sunyata, is an absolutely infinite Consciousness, leads essential stepping stone, or to an understanding of platform, to go on to the next Mahasunayata; this stage. It is not optional. understanding resolves Sadhana without this is not apparent tension between completely useless - that conditioned (samskrta) and would be too extreme an Unconditioned (asamskrta). At assertion; but for sadhana to such a point we apprehend that act as a focus for the arising consciousness is not limited, of the Transcendental, it has conditioned by, or confined to to be based in the cultivation any 'object' whatsoever, of sunyata. Sadhana without a whether apparently conditioned strong experience of the third or Unconditioned. I cannot great stage of the spiritual really say very much about path and meditation probably that; it is well beyond even remains more of a my intellectual capacity! psychological exercise, which helps us in terms of samatha. In the practice we have the possibility of working at ever more refined levels of understanding of the nature of sunyata: firstly, on the level 3. WORKING IN THE PRACTICE 1. Introduction 2. Engaging creatively 'Scrap-books' A personal aside Imagination 3. The Earth & Water Element The Earth Element The Water Element 1. Introduction Today, I want to say something more about how to go about working in the practice, something more about the spirit with which we should apply ourselves. And then, I also want to give you some hints, a leg-up, so to speak, to start you off with your investigations into the Elements. So I say something about the Earth and Water Elements by way of introducing how we can approach them. 2. Engaging Creatively As you listen to me leading you through the practice, you may be developing certain impressions. You may think that when you do the practice on your own, what you have to do is to repeat what I am saying to yourself in much the same words. This is partly correct, at least initially. When we first start out, the practice can certainly be substantially based upon that kind of discursive commentary, just as it can be when we first start out with the metta bhavana. But, as we become more adept at the practice and more confident, we should naturally move on from this early preparatory stage. The process of meditating should become more intuitive, and more spontaneously imaginative. If so, we won't need to keep saying sentences over and over again to ourselves in much the way that I am talking us through the practice. Perhaps from time to time, we may need to come back to these more discursive props as a way of reminding ourselves of the basic format of the practice. We may need to have resort to the rational, conceptual modes occasionally. But, we should certainly not be thinking of staying in these realms all of the time; far from it. What we trying to do through this practice is to learn a new way of experiencing ourselves and the everyday world which we walk around in. We're trying to learn how to live in a mythic context, in the same sense as we use that term on the Mythic Context Retreats at Padmaloka. The phrase 'Mythic Context' indicates the possibility of finding a very important new way of relating to ourselves and our experience. It is a bit like what I was talking about in relation to some earlier talks on the retreat on the Vajra; living in the realm of Vajric or Diamond Essence, where the Vajric essence is sparkling through each and every thing. 'Scrap-books' One very practical way of helping to broaden out from your conceptual understanding of the practice and to develop a more imaginative connection is to keep a note of all associations, examples, and vivid experiences that you have of these different Elements. Build up a colourful 'picture-book, or scrap-book', as it were, with a section for each of the Elements. Make this into an ongoing project; this is something that you can keep going as a regular practice, in much the same way that you do with any other spiritual practice that you build into your daily life. Keep adding to your 'collection' of vivid examples which particularly 'speak' to you of the Elements. The point is that there is an enormous amount of scope to each of the Elements. The conceptual definitions are useful, but we certainly must not leave our understanding of the Elements at that. If we set out to explore each Element, we will discover more and more in ever greater depth; they are very mysterious. It is not by chance that one traditional term for the Elements is mahabhuta - The Great Ghost. There is something mercurial and strange about each of them. At first, they may seem very simple and straight-forward. But the more that we look into them, the more wonderfully mysterious we will find them to be. I suggest that you can explore your experiences of each Element in a whole variety of different ways. For example, you could simply look, and observe, and watch. Or, you could perhaps go a step further: you could employ one or another of the talents you may have. You may be a bit of a painter or enjoy drawing; actually, it doesn't matter if you can paint, or draw well or not; you may just enjoy the process of making marks, or putting paint on paper as a way of expressing something of your experience. A variation on this is to cut pictures out of magazines, and make up collages, or story lines. Or, you may be a bit of a poet; even though you may not wish to read it out to others, you may have that sort of poetic muse, or voice inside of you, which comes from jotting a few inspired phrases down. Or, you may enjoy finding poems, or bits of poems, or literary descriptions which seem particularly apt at evoking one or another of the Elements - for instance, there are many fine passages in classical literature which describe Nature. Here is an example which I found that someone had copied out into just such a scrap-book and left in the Guhyaloka Library. Full many a glorious morning have I seen, Flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye, Kissing with golden face the meadows green, Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy; Anon permit basest clouds to ride With ugly rack on his celestial face, And from the forlorn world his visage hide, Stealing unseen to west with this disgrace: Even so my sun one early morn did shine With all-triumphant splendour upon my brow; But out, alack, he was but one hour mine, The region cloud hath masked him from me now. Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth, Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun staineth.4 Another example which came to mind is a very vivid and dramatic description of a hurricane in Jamaica by E.M. Forester (I think). Or, you may be a bit of a story teller yourself, or you might have a flair for descriptive narrative and can write a good account of something which has happened. An aspect of your explorations could be to dwell on the widely ranging forms through which any one Element characteristically expresses itself. And then, we can also sense something more which goes beyond the immediate sensations, which also speaks of what the Element most essentially is. Another possibility is to dwell on the conventional symbols for these Elements: cube, sphere, cone and so forth; this may reveal subtler dimensions in your appreciation of each Element. I came across some notes I had taken from one of Bhante's seminars on the various geometrical forms of the stupa; Bhante suggested that we could dwell on these forms in quite a loose way. For example, he said that we could associate ripeness and fertility and richness and summer with the golden yellow cube. Of course, we could make all sorts of other kinds of associations, but he just happened to mention these ones as an example. And it isn't as if we have to just stay with the geometric shape of the cube; its shape and colour suggests certain textures, and lightness and so forth. In this way we can explore our associations with the Element's qualities. Then he talked of the white sphere as the coolness and purity of the moon, perhaps suggesting harmony. And again the red cone as suggesting the heat of fire, even the passion and energy of aspiration. A personal aside I've been encouraging you to look to the poets. This may not be everybody's cup of tea, but it is one approach which can work. A couple of days ago I was looking through the Collected Works of Shakespeare, and I was reminded of the irony of King Lear's appeal to the elements. There Lear is, no longer in effect the King, on the 'blasted' heath, and in his anger and frustration he invokes the elements to do something to his ungrateful daughters. He's deeply and passionately moved. 'Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks; rage, blow. You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks. You sulph'rous and thought- executing fires, Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head. And thou, all shaking thunder, strike flat the thick rotundity o' th'world; Crack nature's moulds, all germens spill at once, That makes ingrateful man. ... Rumble thy bellyful. Spit, fire; spout, rain. Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters. I tax you not, you elements, with unkindness; I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children; You owe me no subscription. Then let fall your horrible pleasure. Here I stand, your slave, A poor, infirm, weak and despis'd old man. ...' 5 This situation just struck me as very ironic: this man was King and he had succeeded in ordering and structuring not only his own life but the life of the realm. He was the King - so in a very practical sense, he owned everything; he had that divine right; he possessed everything. And now he is howling at the wind and the rain. And yet somehow, in attempting to order the future, in trying to bring it into line with what he wanted, the whole thing fell to pieces, it crumbled away, as inevitably life does. He suffered the fate of so many dictators and people who set themselves up as those who are going to order the world for the better. But fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, the world won't behave in the way the human mind wants it to; the only predictable thing about Samsara is its unpredictability. When Lear ignored the message of his own fragility, he reaped the consequences, particularly through trying to control the future. Lear is humbled in the implacable face of the elements. And in a sense this is because he hadn't taken them into account; he hadn't really seen into the deeper nature of that over which he was King. He had become too puffed up, proud with his assumed ownership and proprietorship. So, he suffers the hubris; he received the consequences of that. And that is what happens to all of us, unless we learn to delve much more deeply into the fabric of our worlds and the way that we structure them. Imagination This sort of imaginative activity is very important. In all these different kinds of ways you can set out to describe to yourself your actual experience, and come into relationship with it through, in a sense, externalising it to yourself. I want to emphasise the importance of actually engaging with the Elements in this way as a preparation for the formal meditation. It is one way of engaging with the practice in the right spirit, to enrich it and to enjoy it. If you do so, you'll become captivated by your practice, you'll become increasingly interested, fascinated and absorbed in it. We need to engage imaginatively with our experience. We need to learn to look, and look again, to see afresh, and then to understand more clearly and deeply the nature of our perceptual processes: 'what makes me think that something is the way that it seems to be?' On the basis of this sort of process, we learn to make new connections, both literal and metaphorical; we can start to understand more completely how things are connected, and flow one into the other. And when we start looking in this way, we start to see how the physical sensations of a particular experience can be a metaphor for something hidden, unseen, how they can act as a symbolic image for something beyond, which cannot be immediately apprehended through the six senses. All of this is essential to cultivating the right perspective for the latter stages of the Contemplation. Actually the last stage of 'letting go' won't be so much a letting go because the more that we come to appreciate things as they actually are, the less we have to hang on to what is only an illusion. The less the illusion will distract us from appreciating the richness and vividness of what is actually there. The more that we cultivate this type of awareness right from the beginning of the practice, and the more that we live in this appreciative manner, the more naturally the practice will come to us. The practice won't seem awkward or contrived or strange. It'll just seem increasingly straight-forward. You'll almost be able to just go straight into the last stage of the practice, sitting there happily watching the flow of your experience passing by, and knowing that you are not trying to appropriate it, not trying to seek refuge in it. If you do this, the next few weeks will be a very rich and exciting and inspiring; you will be systematically cultivating living in and through your senses; you will enjoy becoming more aware and alive to what's going on around you; you will become more poet-like, susceptible and sensitive to the deeper hidden meanings. 3. The Earth and Water Elements I am now going to conclude this talk by spending some time talking about the Earth and Water Elements in turn. I hope to spark you off, so to speak; although, I'm sorry to say there won't be any fireworks. What I have to say is really little more than a prompt, rather than a performance in itself. The Earth Element We are familiar with the definition of the Earth Element as being that which is solid, resistant, firm, substantial, ungiving and dry like sand in a desert. So we can bring to mind all the different examples of these that we know. And then, as I suggested earlier, we can ask ourselves questions like, 'Why a yellow cube? What does that tell me about the experience of the Element Earth?' Next we can explore the Element's secondary characteristics: colours, textures, shapes. In doing this make sure that you explore the Element through all your different senses, that is in terms of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. Through each sense we can find a very particular feel for the nature and character of the Element. At Guhyaloka we are very fortunate to be living in the mountains. We are in the realm of stone, rocks, cliff-faces. The Earth Element is very much right there in front of us. There are so many different ways in which the Earth Element expresses itself here at Guhyaloka. And then, bear in mind that the Earth Element is not just soil, rock, pebbles and so on. It is much more subtle than these particular forms might suggest. For instance, a interesting paradox is ice. Ice is an expression of the Earth Element. You might think ice is water, which of course scientifically it is. But ice is actually a very good example of the Earth Element. And the action of ice, in mountain landscapes, has carved out and ground down the surrounding mountains. Although this is not exclusively the activity of the Earth Element, we see in a particularly dramatic way the friction between different forms of the Earth Element as they struggle and fight with one another. Another example is the action of a tree breaking up rock as its roots work their way through the gaps. There are other expressions of the Earth Element in precious metals such as gold, and silver, and precious stones. Each example has its own particular flavour which reveals something more about the Earth Element of which they are an expression. Coal and steel are more examples. There's a lot here to play with, a lot to discover, a richer and wider perspective on how the Earth Element finds various different expressions in the world around us, and within us. And then we should also explore our experience of the Earth Element in our mind. Psychologically, we can encounter the Earth Element in terms of blocked, locked, immovable, lumpy, resistant energy. Of course such a description conveys a rather negative view of the Earth Element. But then what are the positive expressions of the Earth Element in terms of our minds? The Earth Element could be seen as that which gives form and shape and substance. The relationship between 'spirit' and form is important here. In this sense, ideas, images, and even sounds, express the characteristics of the Earth Element: a solid, resistant quality. And then there is the experience of the strength, solidity, imperturbability and power of particular mental states, for example kshanti; this seems to me to speak of the Earth Element. We should also explore more poetic associations with the Earth Element. For instance, there is the voluptuous, beautiful Earth goddess, Drdha; what does that figure suggest about the nature of the Earth Element? And then, other Earth-beings such as the dwarfs in Tolkein's The Hobbit; these are stocky, squat beings who live under the ground. They somehow express what it is like to be wrapped up with the Earth Element. It struck me that the local farmers around here are very much like this: short, squat, they are baked brown and wrinkled by the sun, their fat, bulging muscles, and hardened stubby fingers seem to speak of a deep involvement with the Earth Element; and then they have these bright twinkling eyes, rather like the fire in a precious stone. These people seem to particularly express the Earth Element in human form. They convey, for instance, a very different impression to that of a male dancer. Another avenue of exploration is the notion of the earth being a repository, a seed-house. If you go down to El Morer at the moment there is a beautiful spread of red poppies and yellow flowers over one of the banks. This has come about through the bank being scraped by a digger revealing a band of earth in which there was clearly a large batch of seed. And now its sprung to into life. This says something about the nature of the Earth Element. The Water Element The Water Element is everything fluid, liquid, that is flowing, that is soft, that is wet and even slimy, and that coheres. We have a strong affinity with the Water Element; after all we are 90 percent water. When you stop to think about it, it's staggering that our bodies are so liquid. We certainly feel our deep involvement with the Water Element on a very hot day, when we are dying for a drink, or a cool dip in the sea. Our bodies seem to drink in water through our skin. There are all sorts of experience which express the Water Element. For instance, dewdrops all over the grass and trees at Padmaloka in the spring morning sunlight are very beautiful, and the spiders' webs dripping with dew like diamond and pearl necklaces. And then the mist; up here the mist creates a very curious world as it wraps itself around the trees and rocks. Another example is rain over the sea coming out of a great black storm crossing over the surface of the ocean. And then, the sea is itself a world of extraordinary life and colour. I probably have more associations with the sea than many. The colour of the sea in the Bahamas and Bermuda, where I grew up, is very often a very beautiful, bright emerald and turquoise. The water there often has a particularly lovely translucency and depth. You see this in mountain lakes as well. Water also has fascinating reflective qualities. And then, there is an enormous amount of life going on in the sea: beautiful fishes, corals and so on. The sea also has immense power. The power of flowing water is awe-inspiring. Think of waves, even on a calm day there are ripples pulsing through the ocean. Or think of the Niagara falls, or the monsoon rains. These express something of the power of the Water Element as it flows from one form to another. But, of course, it is important to remember that the Water Element is not just expressed in the phenomena of water. It finds expression in other liquids and the forms that they take. There is the viscosity of oils, for example. Hot wax in the lip of a candle. The chip fryer. Petrol. Washing up liquid. Mercury as it coheres on the school science lab table. And then, how does the Water Element manifest in psychological terms? We experience it as energy flowing from side to side; a sort of repetitive, cyclical expression. We might associate this with rather negative mental states. But are there more positive associations? The Water Element seems to express the mysterious nature of our emotional depths, and the power that is hidden there. Think of the mythic beings which are said to inhabit the depths of the psyche: the Nagas. I'm afraid to say I don't know much about Nagas, but they certainly seem to be fascinating and mysterious creatures. The king of the Nagas is said to have looked after the Perfection of Wisdom before bequeathing it to Nargarjuna. We must remember that neither of these Elements, Earth and Water, are mutually exclusive. None of the Elements are mutually exclusive. The practice may give this impression that they are, but they do overlap, particularly in the most obvious sense of finding expression together in almost every example we might come up with. For instance, glass is said to be a super-cooled liquid, and over very long periods of time, we can see that it creeps or flows very slightly. In this sense it is an expression of the Water Element. At the same time glass is solid and therefore an expression of the Earth Element. Our own bodies are very good examples of the combined nature of the Elements. Our sweating skin, for instance, is a obvious tangible example of Earth and Water Elements. So remember that very rarely will any one example solely be an expression of just one Element. But usually in any one example a particular Element will stand out as being the most prominent feature from a certain perspective. 4. AN APPLICATION OF AWARENESS 1. Introduction 2. Extending our awareness i. How to cultivate mindfulness? ii. Working against the hindrances 3. Cultivating Metta i. Equating self with other ii. The poetic dimension of metta 4. The Heart's Release i. Transforming pride, conceit and arrogance ii. Cultivating non-attachment and equanimity iii. Working with significant examples 5. Conclusion 1. Introduction With the Six Element practice we embark upon the third great stage of Bhante's system of spiritual life and meditation: spiritual death. And it is not surprising to find that the Six Element practice is an organic unfoldment of the two previous stages, Integration and Positive Emotion. Today I want to explore how the practices of cultivating mindfulness and metta naturally support, feed and extend into our practice of the Six Element practice. We will see how the Six Element practice consciously develops mindfulness and metta as a means to attaining the 'Heart's Release.' The Buddha certainly emphasised the crucial importance of cultivating mindfulness, or awareness, at all times; it's really the quintessential Buddhist virtue. It's interesting to note that Bhante spent many years concentrating on the mindfulness of breathing. We can't have too much mindfulness; there's always further to be gone in developing it; in one way or another, the development of awareness or mindfulness should be a constant factor in our practice of the spiritual life. This is really the main theme of this talk: how awareness is expressed, drawn out and amplified in the context of the Six Element practice. 2. Extending our awareness The traditional terms for awareness are of course smrti (sanskrit), or sati (pali). In the Pali Text Society dictionary sati is said to mean memory, recognition, consciousness, intentness of mind (purposefulness), wakefulness of mind, mindfulness, alertness, lucidity of mind, self-possession, conscience (ethical significance), self-consciousness. The definition of sati as self-possession is interesting because at first sight, it would seem to contradict one of the purposes of the Six Element practice inasmuch as the practice works against a notion of possessing a fixed self. What is meant by self-possession as a dimension of awareness? First of all, we are aware of sense experience flooding in on us; we are self- possessed to the point that we know what is coming through those different gates of the senses; we know what is happening to us and what is going on around us. We are self-possessed to the extent we are alert, attentive to, and aware of what we are doing in our body, and speech and minds, and aware of what is going on around us. I'm reminded of the Buddha's pithy words to Bahiya of the Bark-garment: 'In the seen, only the seen, in the heard, only the heard ...' and so forth. But self-possession is more than just 'bare awareness'. It also involves knowing our over-riding intentions and motives; it means knowing how our current activity serves our sense of purpose, ultimately that of attaining Enlightenment. This comes out clearly in the quote from the Samannaphala Sutta given below. To be self-possessed is also to know how we go about organising, structuring and working up the content of our experience into the various categories of interpretation, and how we arrive at certain conclusions, propositions, assumptions, interpretations. In this way, we are aware of the structures of interpretation we impose upon our experience, particularly the structure of a fixed, permanent self. And cultivating mindfulness in this way means that we become increasingly aware that our notion of our self simply could be a convenient label that we use to describe a vast complex of inter-dependent and constantly changing processes within our psycho-physical being. But in the Six Element practice we're not trying to get rid of the notion of a self in a crude kind of a way: we're not trying to kill our egos off; we're not trying to chop ourselves up, stick ourselves on a bonfire, and heave a huge sigh of relief as we go up in smoke. We're not so heavy handed. It's not this at all. We are trying to become much much more sensitive to what we're doing and how we're doing it. i. How to cultivate mindfulness? How do we develop mindfulness? In the Samannaphala sutta of the Digha Nikaya, the Buddha outlines a complete path to Enlightenment, the lower stages of which, prior to formal meditation, consist in the cultivation of mindfulness and self- possession: "... And how is the Bhikkhu guarded as to the doors of his senses? When he sees an object with his eye, he is not entranced in the general appearance or the details of it. He sets himself to restrain that which might give occasion for evil states, covetousness and dejection, to flow in over him so long as he dwells unrestrained as to his sense of sight. He keeps watch over his faculty of sight, and he attains mastery over it. Similarly, when he hears a sound with his ear ... And endowed with this self-restraint as regards the senses, he experiences within himself a sense of ease into which no evil state can enter. Thus it is that the Bhikkhu becomes guarded as to the doors of his senses. And how is the Bhikkhu mindful and self- possessed? In this matter the Bhikkhu, in going forth and coming back, keeps clearly before his mind's eye all that is wrapped up therein: the immediate object of the act itself, its ethical significance, whether or not it is conducive to the high aim set before him, the real facts underlying the mere phenomena of the outward act. The Bhikkhu is self-possessed in advancing or withdrawing, in looking forward or looking round, in bending, or stretching his limbs, in wearing his inner and outer robes and bowl, in eating, drinking, masticating, and tasting, in answering the calls of nature, in walking, standing, sitting, sleeping, waking, speaking and keeping silence. In all activity he is aware of all it really means. Thus it is that the Bhikkhu becomes mindful and self-possessed ..." 6 One point out of the many that could be drawn from this passage is that we learn to practise mindfulness in the simple, straight-forward activities of life. We just take what we learn from practising the Mindfulness of Breathing and we put that into effect in our everyday activities, in such simple affairs as brushing our teeth, walking around, eating and so on. In all these simple activities, we just become aware of what we're doing in much the same focused, concentrated way that do when we are watching our breathing. And in the same way that we enjoy the process of breathing, the simple act of air coming in and out of our body, so we also cultivate an enjoyment of and an ease of attention in relation to all these other everyday activities. In this way we learn to be mindful in a very simple, basic, practical way. We generate a head of steam, so to speak, crank up the dynamo of our awareness, and then with that search-light of awareness we can turn our attention towards increasingly subtle experiences, such as those symbolised by the Six Elements. ii. Working against the hindrances I'm sure we know all too well that cultivating mindfulness is not easy. We can veer between a variety of extremes. For instance there is the extreme of woodenness: the face of a long, sombre, dour, grey kill-joy, the cold super-ego watching over us to see that we never put a foot wrong; the schoolbeak who stands over us with a wagging finger, telling us to be ever so careful or else something horrible will happen to us. Another extreme is a sort of ebullient, boisterous exuberance: 'what the heck, life's for living!' I think often our difficulties in meditation come about from a lack of systematic cultivation of mindfulness in our daily round. There isn't this a kind of broad base of mindfulness in our lives. When we sit down we're still bubbling away with the different consequences of the way that we live our lives. So we spend a lot of time trying to calm ourselves down, and arrive and be present, rather than being actually present enough to get on with meditating. If we cultivate the Middle Way of genuine mindfulness what arises is pramodya - a sense of lightness, happiness, contentment, ease of mind, an easy conscience, even joy, happiness to be experiencing what we're experiencing. We won't feel guilty about the past or regret what might have happened in the past, and we won't be preoccupied with the future. These kinds of worries and restlessness just won't be part of our minds. In fact we'll be free of all the hindrances, and as a consequence be ready to enter meditation proper. I want to summarise some of these points about mindfulness being an important dimension within contemplating the Six Elements. We are, generally speaking, bound up and attached to our way of seeing things. Through becoming more aware of the Six Elements within our experience, we disentangle our attachments to our perceptions; we alter our relationship to the data of our experience, and hence to our clinging, ego-orientated, self- preoccupied ideas arising in relationship to those data of experience. The more fully we see our experience simply as it actually is, the less attached we become to notions we add onto experience. As we become increasingly aware that our notion of our self, and that of our owning or possessing 'things,' is so provisional and temporary in relation to the continual flow of life around us, and through us, then we become less attached and clinging. The oscillations in the practice of mindfulness, that is between the poles of ebullience and woodenness and the fear of losing one's self, can be corrected by practising metta bhavana. Because it is a very special sort of awareness, metta helps to balance out any inadequacies in our other ways of practising mindfulness. 3. Cultivating metta My comments here are by way of a reminder. To cultivate metta is to deliberately develop a certain quality of awareness: imaginative identification. In his discussion of the First Precept in The Ten Pillars of Buddhism, Bhante quotes Shelley as saying, 'love [is]... a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. ...' Metta is a leap of imagination, beyond ourselves and our self-preoccupation, which identifies with that which is beautiful in another. We can join Keats: 'If a Sparrow come before my Window I take part in its existence and peck about in the gravel.'7 So much is familiar ground. i. Equating self with other Another familiar aspect of cultivating metta is the equating of our self with others; eventually, we come to feel an equally strong emotion for the other as we do for our own self, perhaps stronger. Shakespeare expresses this brilliantly in The Phoenix and the Turtle, which Bhante quotes in The Ten Pillars of Buddhism: 'So between them love did shine, That the turtle saw his right Flaming in the phoenix sight; Either was the other's mine. Property was thus appalled That the self was not the same. Single nature's double name Neither two nor one was called. Reason, in itself confounded Saw division grow together; To themselves yet either neither ...' Of course only the Phoenix and the Turtle are involved in this particular example. Metta goes far beyond just two people, because we develop a love for all beings equally. This is true metta as it spreads out beyond 'my' love. This is to cultivate the love of Mamaki's Wisdom. If we start to develop this kind of impartial love for all beings we cut away the roots of conceit, we become conceitless. Our pride in our self is extended to all beings alike equally; we no longer make comparison with our self because in a sense there isn't a self or another to be compared: everyone else's self is our own, and vice versa. So in this kind of way we find our self one within each, and all within the other. ii. The poetic dimension of metta What perhaps is not so familiar aspect of metta is Shelley's connection of love with imagination and thereby with poetry. 'The great secret of morals is love; ... The great instrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by acting upon the cause. Poetry enlarges the circumference of the imagination by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilating to their own nature all the other thoughts, and which form new intervals and interstices whose void for ever craves fresh food. Poetry strengthens the faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man, in the same manner as exercise strengthens a limb.' (Defence of Poetry) Shelley upholds the value of poetry in the same manner that Bhante pursues his theme in The Religion of Art. What I am suggesting is that a crucial dimension to the Six Element practice is the imaginative and hence the poetic; we needs must become poets. In the exercise I set you to write out how you would lead someone else through the practice, what I'd really like you to do is not to copy the way that I've done it but to write it in poetry, and best of all in the kind of poetic manner that you find in the most sublime poets such as (in English): Shakespeare, Keats and Shelley. If we could communicate how to do the Six Element practice in this form, I think we really would have understood what the practice is about. I feel the manner in which I have introduced you to the practice has been rather pedestrian, rather too earth-bound. Ideally speaking, you would have leapt from that into the realm of the poet, into the realm of imagination. We only really begin to engage with the Elements, their mystery and wonder, when our reason and emotion come together in the higher faculty of Imagination. This quote of Coleridge's makes the point: 'The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other, according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity, that blends, and fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magical power to which we have exclusively appropriated the name Imagination.' The goal and means of the Six Element practice is to give birth to this higher faculty of Imagination, a higher spiritual faculty, which apprehends much more deeply and clearly the nature of reality. This reminds me of Lawrence's phrase: '... man in his wholeness wholly attending'. It is as if we cultivate three levels of awareness: firstly we see what is actually there in terms of the sense objects. Secondly, we see what are the commonplace interpretations we choose to make of these sense objects. And thirdly, we see something beyond that, or through it, something deeper or something higher, something sublime, something archetypal, something perhaps Transcendental, some sort of Truth shining through the situation. I think something of this last level is communicated in a lovely set of lines by Shelley in his Prometheus Unbound. 'Fourth Spirit: "On a poet's lips I slept Dreaming like a love-adept In the sound his breathing kept; Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses, But feeds on the arial kisses Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses. He will watch from dawn to gloom The lake-reflected sun illume The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom, Nor heed nor see, what things they be; But from these create he can Form more real than living man, Nurslings of immortality! One of these awakened me, And I sped to succour thee."' This is the language of the heart. What we place our hearts on is absolutely fundamental. So often we lose heart; we become broken hearted if we place them on that which is, by its impermanent nature, incapable of satisfying us. Put another way, we place our hearts in the wrong kind of way on that which is intrinsically impermanent, looking for that which cannot be had. The stress on the poetic and imaginative dimensions of awareness in the Six Element practice is one which encourages us to place our hearts upon the beautiful. We cannot own the beautiful, we cannot appropriate it; but we can love it, we can appreciate it, we can give ourselves up to it. And so with the eye of the Poet, with the eye of affection, with the eye of harmony, 'as milk and water blend' we can develop one mind by empathising with that which is both within us and without us. If we do this we are embodying the spirit of the Six Element practice: we'll generate the warmth and the colour and the vividness and the vitality which the practice is supposed to have. I'm trying very hard to get across the message that the practice is anything but the cold, rational analytical dissection of life on the mortuary table. It's not that at all. 4. The heart's release As I just said, so often we place our heart upon that which is innately unable to satisfy us. We do this through a lack of awareness. But, through cultivating mindfulness or awareness and metta we start to see the everyday 'things' of life differently, and we consequently feel differently; our attitude and emotions change. In practising the Six Element practice we extend yet further our way of cultivating awareness and metta. And so, in engaging in the practice, we transform our emotions yet more radically. We shall spend the rest of this talk investigating the nature of this transformation. Although initially the Six Element practice may appear to be an intellectual exercise, and may involve garnering a lot of intellectual knowledge, we cannot afford to leave it there. If, as the practice urges us to do, we really do learn to look and see differently, then a radical emotional shift in our orientation and outlook will inevitable follow. This is what we can expect to happen, and to experience in the ongoing warp & woof of our daily lives. Perhaps its a little early for many of us to have experienced this as yet: we've only been doing the practice three or four days! But I hope very much over the next couple of weeks, particularly in doing the practice on a regular basis, you will experience perceptible shifts in your emotional orientation and outlook and in your relationship to yourself and the world about you. Through developing a greater awareness, coming about through the kinds of ways mentioned earlier in this talk, we become less attached and cling less to our experience; we get less wrapped up in it; we personalise it less; we are no longer as entranced, and as enamoured with it. We don't identify with it so rigidly as 'me', and 'mine'. a. Transforming pride, conceit and arrogance According to Mr. Chen, who apparently is the Order's own source for the Six Element practice inasmuch as he taught Bhante the practice, this practice is an antidote to the mental poison of pride, conceit and even arrogance: the notions that 'I am better than, or, equal to, or, worse than another person'. We compare our self to others; this is the habit of identifying and owning certain 'parts' of experience in relation to 'others', labelling some 'mine' and others 'not-mine'. Being strongly rooted within our conditioned nature, this poison is a deep- seated manifestation of the miccha ditthi of attavada; it constitutes the eighth fetter, which is only broken completely by the Arhat. Why bother to attack this poison? Presumably you are familiar with the myth of Narcissus. Narcissus became infatuated and entranced with his own image reflected in the surface of a pool. He was so fascinated with himself that he became oblivious to all that was around him; he would not even take any notice of the beautiful Nymph called Echo, who, having fallen in love with him, was desperate to attract his attention. That, of course, adds a further twist to the story. Eventually, Narcissus pined away and died because he couldn't bear to tear his eyes away. The significance of the myth is perhaps clear enough. One interpretation is that our preoccupation with our fantasy, or illusion, of an 'I' gradually cuts us off from the richness of life which surrounds us. In a sense, we may even die from this sickness. Certainly it leads to becoming increasing locked into an impoverished, mean, narrow humdrum life, which is centred around avarice, hatred and supporting rationalisation - which is inevitably painful. Pride and conceit is transformed through cultivating the Wisdom of Equality, that of Ratnasambhava and his consort Mamaki, whereby we appreciate a Transcendent Beauty that that shines through and in every phenomenon equally. This is very clearly the consequences of metta bhavana, as is clear from the previous section of this talk. We are no longer exclusively fascinated by our self. Instead this is the attitude that regards everything as 'mine', as my own, as precious and valuable, rejoicing, delighting, enjoying everything and everyone, regarding all as our own self. One way to think of cultivating the Wisdom of Equality is on the basis of Going Forth from the selfishness of being preoccupied with and attached to our 'self' and 'our' possessions. We become an akincana, as he is titled in the Pali canon, a 'possessionless one', the man-of-naught, one of the epithets of the Arhant, he who abides free of grasping, even of himself, he who leaves no tracks; he is 'a trackless one'. In owning nothing, paradoxically we own everything; we regard everything as 'ours'. Being trackless doesn't mean that the arahant ceases to exist! Nirvana isn't an ideal of non-existence. The trackless one may not appear to exist in any sense that we can apprehend or verify, but that doesn't justify our drawing the conclusion that he doesn't exist - at least, not as we understand existence to be. Habitually we experience our self and the world as existing in relation to our delusion of self, of possessing or not possessing; we leave behind tracks and a trail of wreckage from our attempts to assert ownership, of an 'I', a 'me', what we regard as 'mine'. We can be tracked on account of that. Once we've rid ourselves of this habit, then we've discover what real existence is; we become that which transcends such categorisation. We are free to love deeply every 'thing' equally, to delight in everyone equally, acutely aware of the beauty shining in all equally. Mamaki's Wisdom is closely associated with her sister Pandaravasini's Wisdom of Discrimination, Pandaravasini being the consort of Amitabha. From the point of view of the Wisdom of Discrimination we see the exquisitely unique nature of all phenomena, as they come and go, and yet, relate to each instance with an equal degree of equanimity, seeing that each, in its own way, expresses Reality equally beautifully. Put conceptually, developing these two Wisdoms is the goal of the Six Element practice; this is where the practice is taking us. Developing the ability to appreciate the uniqueness, the beauty, the specialness in each and every situation, and yet being able to sit loose to all experience, because each experience is equally beautiful. There is no need to go running after any one particular set of experiences because there is always another beautiful one to be enjoyed. ii. Cultivating non-attachment and equanimity There are other useful ways of thinking of the aim of the practice. In 'negative' terms, we use the Six Element practice help to develop non-attachment, disengagement, disentanglement, even disinterestedness. In more 'positive' terms we practice to develop equanimity, imagination, freedom, and appreciation of beauty. We're talking about non-attachment in the positive sense. Clearly, we don't want to become detached in a negative sense. Non-attachment is a middle way between the extremes of alienation on the one hand and attachment or grasping on the other. By alienation I mean that we're unable, or we refuse, to acknowledge what is the feeling content of our experience. In this sense, we become detached, if you like 'dead from the neck down', refusing to accept the deeper emotional content of our experience. Or perhaps, we're not so much 'dead', but embody Bhante's description of a 'dragon's head, and snake's body'! By attachment or grasping I mean being emotionally intoxicated with our experience, where we get 'hooked' as we might get with some drug habit. This can unfortunately happen even in such a beautifully scenic place as the Guhyaloka valley; we can get addicted to certain aspects of being here: for instance, the sunsets, or having our particular spot in the valley to ourselves. Alternatively, we may be attached to a particular routine that we are used to having: for instance, our last cocoa at night, our hot water bottle, or hot milk for breakfast. If we stop for a moment to reflect, we will see that we actually have so many of these habits. We deliberately set them up, they suit us, they're ours, we feel very comfortable with them, and if anything comes along which interrupts our enjoyment of them, then we often can get really quite angry. We identify with particular elements of our experience to such an extent that we really believe there is a 'real me' involved who can 'own' and keep these real, enduring experiences. In this way we fly right in the face of the viparyasas; we constantly set up our life so as to deny the flow of impermanence and insubstantiality, getting ourselves caught up in a web of sticky attachments. By contrast the Six Element practice encourages us to cultivate a new attitude towards life: where we get less and less caught up with the elements of our experience, happily allowing them come and go - as they inevitably will do in any event. Consequently life becomes much richer and much fuller than we habitually experience. Being much more open to the comings and goings of life, we are no longer so preoccupied with trying to 'order' and 'structure' our world to suit us, to make us feel comfortable. We happily allow the dynamic energy of life to ebb and flow. All the anxiety, irritation and desires with which we habitually preoccupied ourselves dissolve. The practice encourages us to learn to experience 'what is', and to experience it as fully and richly as it can be; then we let it go, realising we cannot possess, own or control our experience. A sense of lightness and ease comes quite quickly from practising, because we relate differently to our experience. iii. Working with significant examples To work creatively in the Six Element practice, make sure you are learning from the little things of life: the awkwardnessess, the difficulties, the disappointed expectations, the unmet desires, and so forth, where we get a bit upset, or irritated or frustrated in one form or fashion. Bring into the practice your preoccupations of the moment, whatever actually intoxicates you, ensnares, entrances you - examine these examples under the auspices of the practice, trying to really understand more deeply just what it is you're looking for, what's fascinating you, what holds your attention, what's getting you going in relation to any one particular example. Be sure to avoid using safe examples; these are OK to start with, but be more adventurous; go for the ones that really matter to you, you'll get far more interested in the practice! For example, how do you feel when the marmalade runs out, or there isn't any more of a particular type of herb tea you are fond of having? Investigate what is happening in these kinds of minor reactions; we see them as little pointers, teachings about this basic conceit of 'me' and 'mine'. Take for example the way you like your breakfast in the morning: some of us have a very particular breakfast routine which we just hate being disturbed in any kind of way whatsoever. Or, our last cup of 'something' at night - it has to be just 'right'. What is it about all of this which is so important to us? Why do we invest so much of ourselves. Food is quite a good area for examples because we are actually very tied up with it. Sex is another area - perhaps not the best thing to be contemplated here at Guhyaloka! But it is, for some, fascinating and ensnaring, a particularly alluring combination of the Elements. What is it about this curious activity which draws us so strongly? Or, what about the clothes we wear? Most of us have a quite particular sense of dress and style, having strong preferences for what 'suits' us, and what doesn't; we like the way we dress and wouldn't 'be seen dead in' something that someone else may be wearing; 'OK on them'. What is it about this which is so important to us? Perhaps some of these examples may seem rather too complex to fit into your actual Six Element practice. A simpler example is our hair or the shape of our body; what is it about these that we like or don't like and why is it that we can get upset when someone makes out we're growing bald or too fat or podgy, or too thin or skinny? Why are we so proud, why are we so touchy, why do we take offence? 5. Conclusion This afternoon we have explored how the Six Element practice is an application of awareness, as most particularly experienced in terms of metta bhavana. I hope that I have communicated something of a richer and more elastic and flexible approach to the Six Element practice. I hope that gradually, over the next few days as I leave you more and more to lead yourselves through the practice, you will find your own way, poet-like, into an increasingly imaginative way of working in the practice. 5. THE OBJECTIVE CONTENT OF OUR PERCEPTION 1. Introduction 2. The nature of our perceptual process i. The mercurial nature of perception ii. Reframing the emotional content of our perceptions iii. A provisional perceptual framework iv. Categorising 3. What is rupa? i. Defining our terms ii. Clarifying the meaning of the word 'objective' 4. Conclusion 1. Introduction In the Six Element practice we analyse our experience into the six Elements; we divide it into constituent parts or categories or compounds. And then, we look at each constituent part in turn. Broadly speaking, the six Elements fall into one of two major c