Talks - The Boundless Heart - Rob Burbea

https://dharmaseed.org/retreats/1466/

Talk 1

Is it helpful to see practice as sacred?

• On one end yes, set it as a holy part of the day

• On the other, trying to make it special can make it counterproductive, creating expectations etc…

• To long is to experience the pain of longing, but it is also to experience the beauty of longing.

• If my aspirations are bigger, little stresses in life will seem smaller, but pain from wanting to fulfill the aspiration will be there as well Talks - Beauty of Desire - Rob Burbea

Expectations of meditation

• we imagine in meditation there should be no thoughts
• we suffer a lot from this and other images we have of meditation
• WE WILL THINK AND THAT’S OK, IT MIGHT EVEN BE GOOD

Point of Practice

• Developing different ways of looking
• Getting ready to work with emotions as they arise in real life

Talk 2 (practice starts at minute 22:30 - 40)

What do we want from working with our emotions?

• Maybe I want the fullness of my being (an open heart)

  • Open to joy, touched by beauty
  • Open to pain and work with difficult emotions

• Not in the business of only feeling positive emotions, or don’t feel emotions at all

  • Do we really want to be free of desire?

• Developing confidence in our emotional life

  • often there’s fear of our emotionality
  • we’re in the habit of distracting ourselves from emotions

• Not just about being aware

• not just about being with whatever feeling

• Also about **being able to work skillfully, experiment, explore, look at the context (what are the assumptions?) **

  • Brings understanding of our emotional life

Emotions and Mindstates

• Mindstates are subtler
  • Boredom, energized, contracted etc.. are mindstates
  • Emotions are a subset of mindstates
• If we’re not aware of Mindstates we become more reactive

Practice

• Paying attention to mindstates by focusing on the body

  • There might also be certain thoughts with each mindstate
  • Texture of the mind (spacious, energized, depressed)

• Golden question

  • Is my mindfulness of emotions helpful or not helpful?
  • sometimes we have reactions to emotions that make things worse

• Energy of emotions Vs energy of attention

  • If emotional energy is higher, we’re overwhelmed by the emotion
  • if attention energy is higher we’re calmer, we can heal

• Line in the upper body where most emotions show up (from below the belly to the head)

• Reducing emotions to body sensations is a bit simplistic

  • There’s often meaning and complex parts of emotions
  • still helpful to start with the body

• Being aware of unconscious expectations

  • Expecting very clear and steady experience that matches the instructions
  • In reality it is often blurry and goes in waves (of being clear, being present being caught up in thought)
    • recognize that waves are impermanent
    • watch them come and go like a kid in the water
    • realize you don’t drown and learn to trust these waves

• Can we let go of the demands and expectations?

• Emotions sometimes feel like they take us over

  • They become the lens through which we see the world

• In this practice, we make emotions the object of attention

  • Awareness is bigger than emotions
  • we don’t get so overwhelmed

• When labeling emotions sometimes we fabricate them

  • We label a feeling in the chest as fear and it becomes fear
  • Other times labeling can be useful
  • Not good, not bad, it’s a tool

Mind

• What is the mind doing during practice?
• Is it constantly judging the experience as good or bad?
  • I should be feeling this or that
  • Again I’m feeling this way
  • I shouldn’t be distracted
    • Good to feel distracted as it mimics our everyday life and helps us prepare for it
  • Make conclusion about my whole life and personality
• Instead of seeing them as a problem, it’s good to see them and come up
  • These judgments come up and affect us in daily life
  • **Good for them to come in during practice **
  • Better if we caninsert a little feeling of (great) doubt (The 5 Heroic Motivations
• We can be aware of what the mind is doing
• Or we can consciously introduce skillful thoughts
  • The view of the mind affects our physical experience
  • We can think, “What I’m experiencing right now is exactly what I need to, what I should be experiencing”

Practicing Short Bursts of Intense Attention

• Very difficult to maintain mindfulness over a long time

  • It’s almost a way of consciousness to bring in the past and the future
  • We can sometimes practice short bursts of energized presence
    • Chop off past and future
    • Pay attention to only this moment (25:00)

• The mind produces thoughts like trees produce leaves

  • we can learn to accept that and be at home with the mind
  • not judging thoughts as beautiful or ugly

Meditator as a revolutionary

• Developing the capacity and courage to feel the pain of our times
  • hold and respond to the pain
• Practice reduces some kinds of suffering but opening the heart opens us to different kinds
• James Hillman - Psychotherapy as anesthesia
• fear is not the same as concern
  • The latter has a sense of stability
• Part of practice is about taking risk
  • Risk and insight reinforce each other
  • Do I have fear of speaking out?
    • Can I overcome that?

At home in the Universe

• The age of enlightenment became the age of convenience, the age of alienation and individualism
• consumerism is not just about greed, but now became a way to assert our identities
• individualism is so entrenched in today’s society it might not be possible to get rid of it. How can we work with it?
  • we tend to associate our “self” with one personality
  • how can we open up our individualism, our sense of self even more in a good way?
    • fully expressing ourselves can be a way to feel at home in the Universe.
    • Feeling at home with existence involves opening to and accepting death ☠
• Asking ourselves:
  • Where am I seeking identity?
  • How am I expressing identity?

Letting Go of Ways of Looking (Mystics Talk)

• It’s not that hard to have mystical experiences through meditation (e. G. Oneness etc)
  • If we don’t cling too tight to them, we can allow them to unfold and evolve
• There’s always a way of looking
  • We assume that being with “what is”, being mindful is being with reality
    • We don’t realize that this is based on a scientific materialist view
• We might dismiss God and Soul
  • Saying that those would also be impermanent
  • Impermanence is eventually not ultimate reality
  • Not permanent, not impermanent
• The problem is entrenchnent in a view
• The more we let go, the more love, or the more we get insight into Emptiness → the smaller our sense of self, the more we experience oneness and have othrt mystical experiences
• we cling less to perception

Working on Emotional Body (Day 6)

• Focus on allowing, welcoming, inviting experience
• Strong emphasis on allowing
  • Soften up experience, releasing tension
• Open up to all experience
• Notice aversion creeping in
  • Notice that anger, fear and pain are driven by aversion
  • Notice it 1,000 times to really internalize
• Beware of aversion dressed as “fake” allowing
  • I want to allow to let the experience fade
• Practice with aversion in life
  • Take a walk under the rain

Am I free to Inquire Talk

• Some questions are asked, but not looking for crystallized answers

  • Questions Like “Who Am I” are meant to help us find spaciousness and question assumptions

• Other questions in practice may accept answers

  • Understanding suffering, where it comes from etc…
  • What are my assumptions that lead me to suffering?

• Allowing ourselves to inquire and question brings energy in practice, which brings concentration

  • **If practicing with Not-knowing, is that alive? Is it with curiosity or without curiosity? ** Not-knowing | Uncertainty

• We tend to think that we can “trust our feelings”

  • But our feelings are also affected by our conditioning and our stories

Books: Brian Green, The Fabric of the Cosmos