Well, welcome everyone. So, this is talk number three and we've been working our way through the Satipatthana and looking at it particularly through the window of Buddhist psychology. You know, this is a complex text and there are many different ways that one can look at it, but I've been using... in a way the structures of the text to look at some of the foundational ideas of Buddhist psychology. Hello, do come in, sit down. And so yesterday we looked at some of the sections in the text that talk about the in a way, becoming aware of the structuring of the sense of identity, the structuring of the sense of self.

[01:05]

And we looked at particularly Vedana reaction, in the way that this is the sort of point at which we kind of, almost on automatic pilot, just hook onto or reject experience. And it's particularly linked to the actions of the senses. We perceive something and we either grasp at it or we reject it. And we do this in subtle ways all the way through life. So, you know, it's not just the kind of I want an ice cream kind of wanting and grasping. It's also just in the way that we perceive things. You know, each of us, as we walk into this room, we see the room differently. And we see it because we have particular feelings. And those interests are driven by our karmic patterns, our habitual patterns, our established patterns of mentality. And so, you know, we might be interested in the construction of that wall or we might be interested in the colour scheme or we might be looking out of the window and looking at the birds in the trees or we might be noticing the temperature or, you know, whatever it is.

[02:14]

If you asked each person to write a description of this room, they would write something different. And this is to do with our interests. conditioned mentalities that of course there'd be enough of an overlap probably that you know we could agree that there was a a real room that we're all inhabiting the same space and we can probably hear other people's descriptions say oh yes you know i understand that yes i actually i did notice that there were trees outside the window or sometimes we haven't you know depending how observant we are and so on. But basically each of us walks around in a world that is constructed out of our processes of attachment and the world that we inhabit is coloured by those habits of perception that are the product of our years of experiences in the past and that those

[03:15]

Patterns of perception lead us to react in a certain way. And if you remember, I talked particularly about the teaching of the Skandas, which we find in the last section of the Satipatthana, which is a teaching which shows how this sense of being in the self-bubble is maintained by going round and round and round this cycle of perception, reaction, association, rebuilding the story. creating formations, creating the conditioned mind, which leads us to see things in that way, and so on and so forth. And we just go round and round this circle and keep on rebuilding the sense of identity. And we looked at how, first of all, as I say, in the section on Vedana, we see the Satipatthana showing us how we can spot these moments of... attachment, the moments of reaction and how actually this happens in an embodied way.

[04:16]

So Vedana is very much an embodied reaction. It's almost like the cells our bodies go towards things or shrink away from things. And we can observe that at a kind of bodily level. So the first section of the Satipatthana in working with body experience prepares us for that awareness in which we can start to spot the Vedana reactions that we we have but then the third section on citta this is the section in which we find ourselves caught up in broader mentalities this is the the predominant mentalities that that we hold and we might be predominantly in a greed mentality or predominantly in a rejective hate mentality or predominantly in a deluded mentality and so on and so forth. And so these kind of broader states of mind underlie the reactions of Vedana.

[05:19]

And then we started to look at the last section on Dhammas, the section which goes to the sort of core teachings of Buddhism, the core philosophical theory of Buddhism. And in this section, we saw how there is a kind of building up of experiencing. So first of all, we notice the hindrances. We notice how we get caught in sense, desires, aversion, sloth and torpor, restless and remorse, doubt, and so on. And these are the sort of mind strategies that slow us down, that prevent us from coming to awareness and And then the aggregates, the skandhas that I was talking about. It's the next section. So we become aware of this process of building and rebuilding the identity, the sense of self. And then we become aware of the sense spheres, the way that all of these are particularly expressed through the action of the senses.

[06:27]

And in Buddhism, we have six senses. We have the eye, the ear, the nose, the tongue, the body, and the mind sense. And all of these senses are, again, they are, in a way, they're vijnanas, they're conditioned minds that operate on their own and that latch on to experiences. So the mind is caught by thoughts. The eye is caught by sights. The ear is caught by sounds. You hear your name across the room and suddenly your attention is caught. This is the senses being caught. Okay, so this is what we have looked at so far. This is just a sort of summary of where we've gone so far. What I'd like to do today is to look particularly at the last element in the... section on Dhammas which is the Four Noble Truths which I'm sure you are well aware of as a teaching if you've been around Buddhism for any length of time but I'd like to look at the Four Noble Truths in the context of Buddhist psychology because I think that they give us above all else a map of both enlightened and unenlightened process and they

[07:51]

in a way, give us that core understanding that the Buddha brought to us, into which all of the other teachings integrate. And so I think it is, in the Satipatthana, we have this direct path to enlightenment. And where does it end? It ends with the Four Noble Truths. So it's important that we understand what the Four Noble Truths are about. And I would like to put that teaching in the context of Buddhist psychology. Okay. Soul. First noble truth. Dukkha. And I have planned out again today. Okay, so on the front page of this handout we have some descriptions of Dukkha.

[09:23]

I shall read the short one. I shan't read the whole of the long one, but you can take it away and read it for yourself. I think you'll find it somewhat familiar. Birth is Dukkha. Aging is Dukkha. Death is Dukkha. Sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair are Dukkha. Association with the unbeloved is Dukkha. Separation from the loved is Dukkha. Not getting what is wanted is Dukkha. In short, the five clinging aggregates are dukkha. Okay, so the last point, the five aggregates, the skandhas, that cycle of creating self, this is dukkha. This is the, in a way, the summary of the whole thing. Our attachment, our processes of attachment are dukkha. Joy is not Dukkha.

[10:30]

Joy is not Dukkha. Joy is not Dukkha. Joy is not Dukkha. Do you want to say some more? Well, I mean, it's an interesting question in a way, because, you know, joy can sometimes lead to dukkha you know if we if we cling to something that's not actually available then that can create dukkha that can create suffering because we have loss but joy itself i think is not dukkha separation from the left that's right yes yes but no i mean joy is not listed dukkha I was listening to quite an interesting Dharma talk from Joseph Goldstein recently, where he was talking about the word dukkha, and he had a definition for it which I had not heard before.

[11:36]

I don't know if you're familiar with it, but he said that one derivation of the word is that du is bad, and that ka can be understood as the hole into which the axle fits. And so he was saying, well, you know, if you've got a badly fitting axle, then you get a bit of a bumpy ride. And I was listening to this and I thought, well, yes, and in a way you're talking about a square peg in a round hole as well. And, you know, I think in some ways dukkha is about having expectations of something that ain't going to happen. You know, in some ways we cling on to the idea that life is going to be permanent, that it's going to be comfortable, that it's going to be the people that we love are not going to disappear or die or get sick and so on and so forth.

[12:38]

And life is constantly disappointing us. that the dukkha element of it is that level of disappointment that happens. It's not about the reality of things. It's about that extra bit that we add on. And I think this image of dukkha as the square peg in the round hole is quite interesting because, you know, if you think about kind of living in a Buddhist community, often we talk about kind of like when you're living with other people and practicing with other people, you get all your rough edges knocked off. So in a way, I think it's about... You know, we start to, as we work with these things, we start to find that actually we're working with kind of, in a way, letting go of those bits of ourselves that grit in the system, the bits that get stuck in the system. And I think this is what's being talked about in terms of dukkha. It's the bits that don't... run easily, the bits that in some way cling and attach and so on, and that make discomfort.

[13:40]

Okay, so I'd like to go on and talk a little bit more about Dukkha because it's a very important topic in terms of... Okay, so... This is the first noble truth. The second noble truth is dukkha samudaya. OK, so if dukkha is basically to do with the things that happen to us, the things that are uncomfortable, the things that are difficult, samudaya is to do with things that come up. So the second noble truth basically is to do with arising. And if we look in detail at what is said about samudaya, then samudaya is about the arising of attachment.

[14:43]

So things happen that have that potential to cause us grit in our lives. And in response to that grit... Attachments start to arise in us. We start to cling to things. We start to want things. And in particular, in the description of it, it talks about kamma, bhava, and bhava. This little phrase comes at the end of this section on clinging and some will die on the arising of reactions. And I think this is very interesting from a psychological point of view because in a way it gives us a kind of typology. Kama is sense pleasures. Bhava is becoming. And Bhava is non-becoming.

[15:45]

So basically what the second noble truth is saying is that in response to dukkha, to the afflictions that happen to us in life, attachments start to arise and initially we engage with these through our senses. So, you know, we can think about this a bit, you know, what happens on a day when... things you know you have a difficult day at work or whatever what do you do typically people will go home and they'll do something that involves their senses to distract themselves you know whether it's a drink whether it's watching the telly whether it's a hot bath whether it's chocolate whatever they will latch on to something that will distract them through their senses and this is the kind of initial reaction to discomfort ordinary human reaction Then, if that's what tends to happen is, you know, the first time maybe you have that bar of chocolate, but day after day life gets tough.

[16:58]

You have bad experiences day after day. What do you do? You get into habit patterns. Because our minds get conditioned, we tend to do the same thing. So we tend to go for the same drink or we tend to always get into the ice cream or... We tend to be the kind of person who goes to the cinema when we need to escape or, you know, whatever it is. We get our habitual patterns of escape. And those then move us into that second stage, the stage of becoming. So from just simply being an immediate kind of sensory distraction, we move on into that identity building that we've been talking about already. So... Second stage is the creation of self. Okay. And, you know, we can see how this builds out of the senses. And I think this is quite interesting in terms of what I was saying yesterday about the senses in a way being a simpler stage.

[18:07]

Because they are like the first stage of attachment. And so when we looked at the anthill sutta yesterday and we saw that the senses came after the tortoise, the skandhas, and in a way were closer to the spiritual source, you know, we can see that, yes, we may kind of go overboard on sensory distractions, but they are just the sort of first level of self-building. But once we've really got into the identity stuff, then we've built up something quite heavy there. You know, this is a sort of descending pattern of delusion, if you like. Because finally, what happens, you know, if we, for the most part, we live by distracting ourselves through identity, both on a sort of very generalised way in terms of conditioned perception and the conditioned mentality, and quite specific ways in terms of being attached to particular identifications. And so we might become quite...

[19:09]

rigid in our sense of who we are. We might associate with quite a narrow band of people or band of interests and so on, which all have to do with this sense of identity. But at some points, the identity breaks down. And I think it's quite interesting to think about how that happens psychologically, because often identity is linked to external factors like relationships like job like housing like places that we identify with and so on so our sense of self is often embedded in a whole world of self objects and actually we talk about the self as being object related that the self is dependent upon the objects that we give our attention to so You know, as long as we are in that sort of world and we've become whatever it is that we find protective, then there's a kind of continuity in that.

[20:15]

There's a kind of illusion of permanence there. And we can kind of jog along in life quite comfortably enough in that position. But then sometimes we tip over. Sometimes that doesn't work. And often the times when that doesn't work are the times when... in some way that self-world falls apart, you know. Somebody close dies, or we lose our job, or there's some disaster and we lose our home, or some of these other things that make up our sense of self disappear. And, you know, I mean, it's interesting to think about that point, because that point, in a way, is... You could think about it as a kind of window of opportunity. You can say, well, all these attachments have gone. Hey, I can go and get myself enlightened. But it doesn't tend to happen that way. And if we're lucky, we probably just build another identity for ourselves and it's probably good enough and we kind of jog along through life.

[21:21]

Maybe a more enabling kind of identity, but we kind of jog along there. But sometimes we may fall into despair. Sometimes we may fall into that state of vibabra, of non-being. And we get into that kind of dulling of experience where we just want to shut everything out. And if you think about this sort of, for instance, in terms of alcohol, because, you know, this is quite to be simplistic, you think the person who kind of comes home after a tough day and just has a glass of wine as a sensory distraction, you know. No great harm, probably. The person who then becomes very identified with drinking is, you know, they may become a wine buff. You know, they know all the different varieties. They like a good wine. They don't like that rubbish that you buy at the supermarket and so on and so forth. They've got an identity that is associated with good wine and they know who they are. And so there's that level of sort of identified drinking. But then there'll come a point where the person, if they go down the road of alcoholism, there comes that point where they are just drinking to disappear.

[22:28]

They're just drinking into oblivion. And I think that's what's being described as Vibhava. So I think Vibhava is that shutting down, that disappearance. And so we can see in this process of Samudaya, there is a descent into delusion. Or avidya, not saying. Through the process of building attachment to a greater and greater degree. So this is the second noble truth. Okay, third noble truth, Dukha Niroda. Third noble truth. The eroder is basically about stopping or cessation.

[23:34]

And what we're talking about here is an unhooking from these attachments. It's a breaking down of the process of attachment. Okay? So... So what the teaching of Four Noble Truths is basically saying is that there are two ways in two directions in which we can go. We can experience afflictions and through the process of clinging, because we have attachments, we can go off along this route of delusion and we can build identity through the standards and and the cycle of the 12 links of dependent origination and so on. These are all descriptions of this process of self-building.

[24:36]

Or we can unhook and we can experience the... We can stop the arising of attachment and we can simply be with what is arising. We can be in the experience. Dukkha Neroda is about unhooking from attachment and it's being with experience as it is. And particularly in permanence. Because basically, these two paths, this is the path in which we are thinking about, we're trying to create an illusion of permanence.

[25:39]

The path of samudaya is the flight into permanence and, in fact, into rigidity. I think what's interesting, when you look at these two paths psychologically, What we're really talking about is a spectrum. We're talking about, on the one hand, the person who is very rigid, who is very locked into narrow behavioral patterns, a narrow sense of identity, who is very attached to certain things and wants things done a particular way, doesn't want to try other things, is very frightened of the world, very frightened of acting. Or the person who is... free, who is able to be within permanence, who is comfortable with the flow of things. And the person who is comfortable is on this route, which is the eightfold path. And so the spiritual path is the path of unhooking from these narrow attachments.

[26:58]

Okay. And so, you know, in this teaching of the Four Noble Truths, we basically have Buddhism in a nutshell. Buddhism, according to the Four Noble Truths, is basically says, there are afflictions in life. Things happen to you. And we have a description of the things that happen. Dukkha, aging, death. sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, despair, association with the unbeloved, separation from the loved, not getting what we want, and so on. Out of those, we build, we grasp at things, and we start to build this illusion of permanence, which we call self, and which shores up our sense of self. But if we can unhook from that, we live in the flow of life, we live in the flow of impermanence, and we're on the spiritual path.

[27:59]

And I think what's interesting about the Satipatthana is that this formula, although it comes right at the end of the text, has also been running through the text all the way through. So when we go back to this refrain that we looked at in the first session, he remains focused on the phenomenon of origination, which is all of this here, the... Origination of the self, the becoming process, and on the phenomenon of passing away. The fact that things are impermanent. So through the whole process of this text, we are basically seeing how at the micro level and at the macro level, things come into being dependent on condition, including our own sense of identity. and how these things are actually just constantly flowing and fluid and moving on and impermanent.

[29:02]

And so, you know, the things that are dukkha, the sickness, old age, dying, and so on, these things themselves are part of the truth of impermanence. You know, and so the noble truth of dukkha, it is what it is. You know, we are, we do get old, we do get sick, we do die. This is a noble truth. And also the fact that we form attachments on the basis of it, dukkha samudaya, that there is clinging, creates that square peg in a round hole, that uncomfortableness and so on that we are experiencing. Hello, yes. Yes, sure, because you've got to go, haven't you? Yes. In psychotherapy, can you be on who you are with that heavy dosage of the Dharma? Well, I think the thing is that in terms of psychotherapy and probably in terms of Buddhist training as well, what we are talking about here is a spectrum.

[30:12]

You know, the difference between this line, delusion, this line, enlightenment, you know, there is actually a spectrum here. And, you know, whether we're talking about mental health, whether we're talking about spiritual health, I think the two are very much the same thing. But what we might be doing is moving somebody from here to here on that spectrum or here to here. We're unlikely to be moving somebody from here to here, either in therapy or probably in Buddhist training. You know, most of us are just moving a bit along this line. Even moving a bit, can we do it without heavy dosage or... Buddha Dharma.

[31:24]

going to make them closer to this side of the spectrum, more comfortable. And to go back to what I was saying yesterday, the psycho diagram, the counselor arrives in a state in which they are grounded, in which they have confidence, they have faith. The client arrives without that. Over the course of the therapy, the planet gradually requires more confidence, more faith, quite a bit of which is caught in some way from the presence of the therapist. So, yes, I mean, I think what moves us from here to here is basically developing confidence in the life process, the spiritual process, however you want to frame it. Yes. Okay.

[32:25]

Okay. I'd like to just bring in another text at this point. This is a text from the Majima Nikaya, another text in the Pali Canon. And it's on the back of your handout. And I think this is, again, a very useful text if you are looking for therapy method. It's quite a sort of behavioral program that the Buddha undergoes. So, again, I will summarize what this is about rather than reading it out because it's quite long. But you can take it away and you can read it. But this is the section that is about the Buddha's experimentation. So, prior to his enlightenment, the Buddha describes how he would practice by going out into the forest. And he would seek out the places in the forest where the spirits were supposed to dwell, the scary places in the forest.

[33:33]

And he would go and he would sit there and he would spend time there. And he says, and when I went there, fear would arise. And if I was sitting when fear arose, I would continue to sit. If I was walking when fear arose, I would continue to walk. If I was lying down when fear arose, I would continue to lie down and so on. So basically what he's doing is he's training himself in just being in the fear. And what's interesting is that at that point, he has his breakthrough. It's like this is prior to the night of the Enlightenment. And I think this is really important, you know, and I think it relates particularly to when we are working with difficult material. Because what he's describing is, basically, he is going and he is facing himself with dukkha. He's facing himself with impermanence and death and so on. He's facing his fear. But rather than allowing attachments to arise, he's unhooking from them and he's going into that state of dukkha niroda.

[34:40]

He's just staying with the fear and allowing the fear to be there until it dissipates. And then as it dissipates... he moves on. And then when it arises again, he stays with it until it moves on again. And, you know, I think that this is, it's so interesting because it's like the whole of Buddhist teaching is built on this understanding that if we can stay with our fear, if we can stay with the most fearful things that we can face, then that is the direct path. And this is where we end up at the end of the Satipatthana, that the Four Noble Truths, that dukkha, facing dukkha, dukkha nirodha, not giving in to the desire to rush off into attachment and craving and so on. That is the spiritual path and this is the end point in the Satipatthana. And I think it's also very interesting in terms of therapeutic method.

[35:47]

You know, I was actually reading a paper earlier today about working with trauma and talking about how traumatic events can have a very detrimental effect for people. But actually, one of the things that they've discovered is that if they follow up people who've been involved in traumatic events, then at least 50% of them actually say that event was life-changing in a positive way. They were following up people who were involved in a ferry disaster in the 1980s. But, you know, this could be any kind of trauma of that kind. That actually, if people are able to process their trauma and stay with the what's arising and allow themselves to fully experience it, then that can actually be positively transformative for their lives. You know, it doesn't... It doesn't always look that way. The other 50% of people felt they were damaged by it. You know, but if we look at the four noble truths, you know, 50% go that way, 50% go that way.

[36:54]

I mean, it's oversimplistic, but, you know, I think it gives you an idea that there are different ways that we can work with the things that are difficult in our lives. But difficulty doesn't need to be something that destroys us. It doesn't need to, we don't, become damaged people through the difficulties that we have. In fact, it's through the difficulties that we have that we actually come to spiritual maturity. You know, it's only through having been through life and been through difficulties and difficult experiences and so on that we gain that capacity to develop the ability to hold that spiritual energy and so on. So trauma and difficulty... can actually be very important in terms of spiritual life. And if you look at the lives of people who have lived great spiritual lives, then actually you find that many of them, including the Buddha himself, have trauma in their childhoods and their early lives, you know, and they have processed it in some way that has led it to be this path rather than this path.

[38:01]

Okay, so I'm going to stop at this point again and allow some time for questions and a bit of space to process because we've had three talks and, yeah. I'm just curious, where would you, that's probably the wrong word, but the teaching of no self, how does that help us unpack the suffering, you know, stay with the comma and like with maybe... the power to bear attention, how does that sort of bring us to the cessation of suffering, the experience of the impermanence of the arousing self? Yes. Well, basically, I would see this is the root of self. This is the root of depth. Oops. So, you know, it's like we create that sense of self like a shield around us. You know, I talked about the sort of... way that different people perceive the world. And I often think about it, it's almost like we're in a kind of glass box and we're looking at the world.

[39:11]

One of my books, I've got quite an interesting photograph on the cover of it, which was taken on the balcony of an arts centre where there was a sort of glass panel all round. And you can see the reflection of the arts centre in the panel and you can also see the buildings outside. And... I think that's a bit how we experience the world. We go around and we see the world through the reflection of our own identity. So it's a reflection of all the things that support our sense of who we are. And so the no self is about giving up that, stepping out of the glass box, basically. So that's how I'd relate it to this. And the self in process, though, it is just involuntary, right? I mean... Yes, oh yes, yes, it's automatic. Outside Heather creating, there's no like existing Heather self creating a self. I think Buddhism suggests that there is a person, that we are all people, but we're creating this sort of psychological bubble around ourselves that's the self.

[40:15]

So we're making ourselves into a special case. So I think that... Really, what Buddhism is suggesting is an equalizing process. It's moving into a non-dualistic mindset in which I'm not a special case. You know, I still exist, but so do all of you. And it's about, can I, in a way, see everything as other rather than seeing everything as functions of self? So I'm not just interested in each person as... you know, all of you as an audience, you know, or whatever it is, I can see each of you as individuals and I also become individual myself. And so it's a sort of pluralistic model, I think. That's how I would understand it. And, of course, you know, we are very wedded to our sense of self, so it is about moving a matter of degree rather than kind of throwing out the tortoise completely, as it says in the app.

[41:16]

Yeah. So you describe this fundamental, this movement as being fundamentally gone from a life based on fear to a life based on faith. Yes. Well, I think the... I think it's about a life based, that moving from a life that's based on avoiding fear. to a life where we've got the faith to be able to withstand the fear and to experience the fear. So I think it's more of a kind of feel the fear and do it anyway kind of position. I mean, that sounds a bit gritted teeth, but it's about being able to be in the fear, be in the complete experiencing and complete awareness of all the flow and impermanence of everything around us and having the faith to do that. That's how I would see it. The faith enables us.

[42:18]

Yes, I mean, what the faith is, I think, is, you know, we can kind of play around with how does each of us experience that faith that enables us to be with the fear. But basically, I think it's a sort of confidence in life. It's a faith not to know. This is the path of not knowing. This is the path of needing to know, needing to understand everything. So this is the path of sort of clinging to beliefs that for example, whereas this is the path in which I can have faith that it will all be okay, but I don't actually need to know what the it's going to be or how it's going to be okay or anything of that kind. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. I thought you had your hand up. Other questions? Yes. In this, on fear and dread, the word that's used... fear and terror came to me while I was sitting I would keep sitting until I had subdued that fear and terror and this word subdued to me it brings up like a sense of sort of bringing up teeth and squishing it down there's something that you do to overcome it whereas you were describing it more as you stay dissipated yes I'm not sure how good a translation that is

[43:40]

I'm not a Pali scholar and I would need to check that out. And I think that's an interesting one because I'm sure it doesn't say subdued in the version I usually use. I lifted this from Access to Insight. So I usually use the Bhikkhu Bodhi translation and I don't think it is subdued there. But in any case, I understand it as being the sense that he waits until that fear. But I think even if the word does mean subdued, I think that the... The implication is something about being able to stay with the fear and let the fear until it's no longer mastering him, if you see what I mean. So if the word does mean subdued, then I think it'll be in that sense. I might be wrong, but that's my understanding of this text. Yeah. I'm curious, I wouldn't imagine in the process of therapy, it's quite possible. to deconstruct the self from the identity.

[44:44]

You know, just like, pierce a bubble, a person. Yes. But it doesn't sound that easy for a person to accept non-dualistic point of view, like, not on an intellectual level, but actually be. You know, accept it as a reality. I believe it's a very different level. I wonder if you come across, like, is it Can it be traumatic? One thing is gone, self-identity is gone, and the other is not there yet. Okay, well, let me talk a little bit more about my understanding of what I'm doing therapeutic, because I'm certainly not trying to sort of deconstruct the self in that kind of way when I'm working with somebody. What I'm interested in is relationship to other. And the model of therapy that we teach at Tariki is called other-centred, Because you see the, if we think about this.

[45:45]

There's a lot of dukkha out there. Okay, well the person is sort of surrounded by dukkha. And so they build up a kind of shield around themselves. And they build the shield up with other people. and places and houses, whatever. Anyway, they build up a shield of things which they identify with. This is my space, my country, my home, my relationship, my children and so on. And they create this self-world. And so all of the objects in the world help the person to feel comfortable and at home. You know, and I think we all recognise that. We kind of go through the world looking for spaces that feel comfortable. You know, I come here, I'm not usually in North America, but I'm going around going, hey, this is a bit like the place we went to in the south of France a few years ago.

[46:53]

You know, so it's like, without even thinking about it, we're looking for the familiar so we can rebuild this self-world. But, you know, say this is part of that. You know, partner has their own wife. And so, you know, the client may be relating to this person as an object, as a my partner or whatever. And so, you know, yes, they're a real person, but to some degree, the relationship is functional. But there's also relationship to this person just as a clean relationship. Okay. So the therapeutic method that we... we use. It basically has three areas. It has an area which is about containment, which involves grafting, among other things.

[47:54]

So this is about being embodiment. So this is very much some of the stuff that's in the first section in the Satipatthana, the the being aware, being in the body, being grounded, and so on. And we, the therapist, offers this. The client picks it up, often subliminally. Sometimes we may directly teach grounding as a method. But it's the sort of foundation of the therapeutic interaction. So this is the sort of first field of attention in the therapeutic work that we do. Then we have a second field of attention, which is all about the understanding how this view of the other is conditioned. So quite a lot of what we do is to actually inquire into what's the other's real situation.

[49:00]

So, for example, if I kind of put this into real terms, you know, Mary comes in starts talking in therapy about the person she works with, Jenny, who I was talking about yesterday, and saying, oh dear, Jenny's driving me up the wall, she's doing this, that and the other. Okay, so what we might do, having established a therapeutic relationship that's grounded and so on, we might look at, okay, so who does Jenny remind you of? And we might find that Jenny reminds her of a sister. a mother or somebody she used to know years ago or whoever it is. And we might be able to deconstruct some of this conditioned process that's going on in relation to Jenny. But also we might say, well, what's Jenny's life really about? You know, she's quite irritable at the moment. You know, what goes on in the rest of her life? Oh, she's going through a tough time. in her marriage at the moment. So maybe that's got something to do with it.

[50:01]

You know, we might explore Jenny's experience at the moment a bit and talk about it. This is very non-typical therapy. So we might be talking about Jenny. We might also talk about, well, how does Jenny see you? You know, when you come in and you're kind of all bright and breezy in the morning, how's that for Jenny? And suddenly, a client's starting to see herself through Jenny's eyes. You know. And so we're focusing a lot of our attention here, not entirely. We look at how Mary feels as well. But a lot of the attention is focused on the others that make up Mary's world. Because, you know, this is where the delusion is. And as a result of that, at some level, this is going to change. You know, if she starts seeing Jenny differently, then actually her sense of self is going to change. and probably loosen a bit. You know, it's brought into question some of those assumptions. And also there's a sort of by-product of this, that she may start to be a bit more empathic towards Jenny, which may mean that Jenny behaves differently towards her, which will also become self-reinforcing.

[51:11]

So what we do a lot of is working with people's worlds, working with the way that they perceive things, and challenging that perception in a gentle way by... using a sort of inquiry method into, well, what's really true here? You know, can we get to a better view of how things are? Because as a person's view of the world becomes clearer and cleaner, then their experiencing is also becoming clearer and cleaner. They've got less attachment. They're more at ease in the world because they feel more supported by the people around them because they have more understanding that people operate as they do for their own reasons. And so... It has a knock-on effect in terms of mental health. But we don't talk Buddhism. We don't talk attachment. We don't kind of go for the jugular of the identity. We're very much working at this level. So it's quite a gentle kind of method, actually. And it's quite... When you're working in that way, it's quite like ordinary conversation because most people like talking about the people who they know, their families, their friends, their work colleagues and so on.

[52:19]

And, you know, they don't necessarily... You know, if they've done a lot of therapy, they probably come in expecting to talk about themselves a lot and they feel a bit surprised when you ask about the other person. But if they've just walked in off the streets, often they're talking here anyway. So cleaning up this worldview and understanding a bit of the conditional nature of it is very useful in terms of the therapeutic process and that's where we tend to put our emphasis. Sorry? Sorry? Grounding. Grounding is about being aware of our embodied state, feeling ourselves solidly sitting on the chair, standing on the ground if we're standing up, and connecting with that body sense of here and now. So it's mindfulness in action. It's being aware in the present moment. I am here. I am standing. I am sitting. I am breathing. And we do that as a preliminary.

[53:22]

to the process, but we also might teach clients that. I often do grounding with clients, particularly if they experience a lot of anxiety, because it gives them a firm foundation. How are we doing time-wise? A few minutes, okay. Yeah, just noticing we're losing some people. Okay, one more question then. Yes. You know, I think normally if I kind of come and talk to you and tell you what my, you know, my perception is how I see the world, don't tell me your story, just how you see the world. Yes. And both of us, they don't necessarily take our perceptions all that seriously. We understand what, you know, in a story, the stories can be quite different. Yep. And so, sort of, you know, what do you do with that? I don't... exactly believe my reality and maybe I'm not even that attached to it. How do I live with you and your storyline?

[54:25]

It makes sense. I'm not sure, but I'll have a go and say some things and then you can see whether it makes sense to you. I think that there are a lot of levels in the self-story. I mean, I think the sort of conscious level, we have a whole lot of, you know, we... we kind of are not terribly attached to particular views of things. I think the bit of the story that's really kind of entrenched is the bit that we're not conscious of. We carry around a whole lot of unconscious, often cultural assumptions that just lead us to just, well, that's how it is, isn't it? And it's only actually when we meet somebody who's different, who comes from a different culture or something, that that starts to be challenged. And one of the problems is that a lot of these assumptions are, as I say, cultural. And so we're operating within our own culture all the time. So, you know, there will be a culture here at Tassahara or at Zen Center. And so if you're living here all the time, you'll mostly be meeting people who broadly see the world through the same eyes.

[55:30]

There'll be another culture, which is the whole of the Western world. And again, that will be... just about everybody you meet will be of that culture. And people who don't hold that culture, well, you can just dismiss those as, well, they're different, aren't they? They're African or Asian or whatever it is. So they wouldn't think like that. And so it's like we're able to divide our ways of thinking into like me and not like me or like and don't like very easily because they're supported by all the people around us. And so, you know, it's those sort of subtle levels of, of identification that really support the self in an entrenched way. And those are much harder to get rid of. So, yes, I mean, we might not agree about whether we like cabbage or whatever it is. And we can understand that kind of conscious level of difference. But it's the kind of deeper levels of difference that are important. And, you know, and I think that one of the things that comes from this for me is that it's really important that we are in dialogue with difference.

[56:37]

because it's much more comfortable for us to be in dialogue with people who are like-minded. But actually, in doing that, on a personal level, we're just reinforcing our prejudices and our sense of the world and so on. But also, you know, when we're talking about kind of important issues, like global issues, then actually if we just stay in our own communities, we don't have much effect because we can all agree that... you know, we need to do something about climate change or whatever it is. But actually, that's not going to have any effect on the world because there's a whole lot of other people in a different community who have a completely different view on these things and who assume that that's just how it is, just as much as we assume that this is how it is. And so dialogue with different groups, different perspectives, I think is really important, not just on the personal level, but on the collective level as well. You know, one of the things about Buddhist psychology is that all of these processes, I mean, I'm talking in terms of the individual, but these same processes go on in terms of communities and different cultures and so on.

[57:45]

You know, a culture will have its self-world and will reinforce that identity. Okay. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you.

[58:02]

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