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 OrdinationCourse. I have now transcribed and loosely edited them; theyremain very largely verbatim, and I am keenly aware of their lackof literary merit. Since this project originated from talks, Ihope you will bear this in mind and be patient. These talks arebased on the unpublished transcripts of seventeen of Subhuti'stalks on the same subject, and notes taken from Suvajra's ownseries of talks similarly based on Subhuti's talks. Obviously itis only to the extent that I understand what Subhuti and Suvajrasaid that I convey to you something of what they said.Therefore, albeit acknowledging my indebtedness to these men, andUrgyen Sangharakshita, I speak primarily on the basis of my ownexperience 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'sthemes, and introduced new ones as well, most notably a talk onAkasha.

I am very much a beginner when it comes to the Six ElementPractice. What I offer here is primarily intended to helpstimulate other Order members who take up this practice. Ipresume that in the future someone with far greater experiencewill write a much fuller account. In the meantime I wish youmuch fun and every success with your own explorations.

My thanks to all those who have helped in producing thesetalks.

CittapalaSpring '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 yourstructure, form and method of mind back to how it was forthe practice, I have some you then and with the benefitintroductory remarks. The of hindsight, I'd like you tooutline of our activities over identify some working tips,the next week is going to which you can still applybreak down into two major usefully today. You canparts. Firstly there is the then remind yourself of themmeditation practice itself and as you learn this newmy leading you through it. meditation practice of theThere are six main stages to Contemplation of the Sixthe practice. And I have Elements. So please writeidentified a further seven them down; there's somesubsections common to each homework for you! Thisstage; these come from my own introduction consists in meconception of the practice. taking up a few such tips thatI'll be saying more about both have occurred to me.in leading through themeditation and in these 1. Commit yourselfafternoon sessions. The First, 'Commit yourself

second major part of our to the practice for a specificactivities is that I'll be period of time'. It's no goodgiving 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'llan-hour to an hour or more. drop out, and spend my time By way of introduction doing something else,' inI'd like you to take your mind other words having a 'dip-my-back to the first time that toe-in' type approach. If youyou were taught to meditate at come at it like that, veryan FWBO centre, and back to likely the practice won'twhat I assume to be the work; so you might as well notfreshness of your 'beginner's try at all. You do need tomind'. Obviously you are very commit yourself to taking themuch further on now, but today practice up for a definiteyou are in an analogous period of time. It's just theposition. Just as you were same as the hard-wonthen being inducted into the experience of learning to ridefirst and second great stages a bicycle or swimming. Unlessof Bhante's system of you keep going and keepmeditation, or stages of the trying, however many times youspiritual path - Integration fall off, you'll never get theand Positive Emotion -, you hang of it. If possible, myare now about to be inducted advice is commit yourself tointo the third of those great doing the practice throughoutstages: Spiritual Death. And this period right up to theit won't be long before you public ordinations. It's notare initiated into the final a very long period of time,stages: of Spiritual Rebirth and given the overalland Compassionate Activity. importance of this particularIn a sense, we are already practice in terms of thispreparing the ground for the third great stage of spirituallatter in our evening life, I think it is very wellevocations of the Buddhas and worth while taking thisBodhisattvas. opportunity very seriously and Now, you will have learnt deciding, here and now, thatcertain useful lessons both you are going to do thefrom those first initial practice, and to give it yourexperiences of meditating and best shot.from the subsequent years of2. Identify expectations difficulties, we can do The second lesson which something about them; we canI'd like to high-light comes change our mental states -from the fact that you are that is the purpose of theinevitably going to have practice! There are ways toexpectations. So find out deal with the hindrances.what they are. I don't want Just as we've learnt how toto put you off, but I suspect deal with the hindrances inthat some of you may not find cultivating the Mindfulness of

the practice easy. So don't Breathing and Metta bhavanaexpect it to be easy, but on practices, in the same kind ofthe other hand don't expect it way we can learn to deal withnot to be! - necessarily. I'm any kind of difficulties thatnot saying it's going to be come up in this particularone or the other. But there practice.will very definitely be times i. boredomwhen you'll feel that you'd Remember we can learn howfar rather be doing something to engage with our boredom,else. It is as well to expect with our moods. That we getthat there will be bored may be a 'good' thing.difficulties. After all Mara The crucial question is how wehas a vested interest in not respond to being bored.letting us get to grips with Looked at from one point ofthe practice in any successful view being bored is beingkind of a way. So he is going stalled, as it were, in theto make sure that as soon as 'Gap' between feeling andwe start to make any headway craving. The temptation ofhe does what he can to get in course is to break thethe 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 findpleasurable and stimulating. a more genuinely creativeIn fact, if you get into the alternative. We need to learngroove of the practice, it can how to engage our emotionsbe exciting, exhilarating, creatively in examining thechallenging, 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 doneare engaging in a direct with our heart.assault on our minds, on Find and learn theourselves. So in a sense it's language of imagination inthe last great challenge which relation to this practice. Ifwe could set out on. The we rely solely on the languagepractice, like most meditation of intellect we will not getpractices has a whole breadth far. The language ofand variety of different sorts imagination, coming out of aof flavours and tastes, some transcendence of emotions andpleasant and some not so. reason, is usually perceived in terms of 'images'; these3. 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 mayimportant to resolve to work feel rather discursive andintelligently and wordy. But the wordinessappropriately with these. For should only be something thatinstance, you may encounter is there initially. Theboredom, fears, or wordiness of my introductions

distractions. When we to the practice are attemptsencounter these sorts of to stimulate you to set off inthe right direction. But is about to go under. That isremember to keep looking at quite counter-productive. Thethe moon, not my finger chances are that, if we getpointing at it. The practice into that way of working,is, in essence, intuitive and something in our psyche willimaginative in approach rather kick back and there will be athan rational and discursive. deeper reluctance to return with enthusiasm to theii. Fear practice on another occasion. Fear is a common So take your time, go at theexperience coming from practice gently. If you buildengaging in the practice. up an enjoyable taste for theThis is fine; it may well be a practice, well you willvery good sign. If this gradually make progress. It'shappens, remember to come back no good trying to crack thisto metta bhavana. In other boulder with your fist in onewords, come back to the heart- blow, as it were.centre, to being open andalive, and subtle, and warm, c. Distractionand as if there is light Yet another very commoncoming from your heart. Make experience is beingsure that this is the main distracted. No doubt you havecentre of your consciousness a variety of ways of workingthroughout the practice. with distractions already.Certainly early on in learning One common distraction for athe practice we need to keep certain type of person in thisreturning intermittently to particular practice is that ofconcentrating on and relaxing intellectualism. What do Iinto our heart-centre by way mean by intellectualism? Theof cultivating metta. This is practise is not scientificallythe key. It is no good trying or rationally acute. It hasto think our way to insight not been designed withfrom our head, as it were. scientific knowledge as itsWe'll just get a head-ache. corner stone. So it is veryThat doesn't work. easy for those with scientific We don't have to have an backgrounds to pick holes inunpleasant time. For it right from the start. Theinstance, if we get frightened practice doesn't hold water inwe don't have to eye-ball it that way. But that isout. It's quite OK to let beside the point. Thego of the confrontation, to practice is not meant to be alet go of the practice and piece of accurate science. Soreturn to cultivating metta. yes, those with logical, and,The important thing to or scientific training mayremember is that we are in easily distract themselves bycharge, 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.' Wewe can return to the Six don't need a Science A levelElement practice. In this to know the Elements don'tway, we can come to enjoy the necessarily 'make up' the bodythrill of being frightened, in exactly the way that theand enjoy a little bit of practice outlines. So putchallenge. But we certainly your scientific knowledge ondon't have to jump in at the one side and remind yourselvesdeep end, and learn to swim in of the essential import of theone go. It's pointless having practice.that desperate feeling ofsinking, of feeling that one 4. Engage creatively The third lesson that we bound to get little flare upsshould remember from our early and reactions. So this can bemeditation 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 findinvolvement'. I have quite a these miccha ditthis, to findlot 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. Theycreative thinking. This is have to be flushed out. Theywhat we're cultivating: clear, don't immediately showcreative thinking. For me themselves. But when we dothis is summed up in surprise them, up comes theirLawrence's phrase: 'man in his sting, and they're very readywholeness wholly attending.' 1 to defend themselves. We are cultivating a new Keep up a creativeway of being, reorganising dialogue with the practice:ourselves quite radically. engage with the practice inDon't slavishly repeat the terms of your own life inphrases which I use to quite a practical day-to-dayintroduce you to the practice sense. Again in Lawrence'sin much the same way that words, the practice is aboutpeople 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 venturecultivate metta. As Lawrence forth to discover thesays, it is 'not a trick, or mysterious nature of life, thean exercise, or set of dodges, awe-inspiring magic of it, theor jiggling and twisting of wonderful, unknowable,existent ideas'. We won't indefinable quality which isbreak through to Insight by inherent to life.merely copying in this kind of In our practise wefashion. We each have to 'ponder over experience, andmaintain our initiative. We coming to a conclusion'; noare each responsible for doubt these conclusions are

sustaining our own interest, provisional. Perhaps therein sustaining our own process can never be a finalof clear, creative thinking. conclusion. Perhaps our So this is a useful pondering cannot be summed upquestion with which to review in words; that's all well andeach session of practice: 'did good.I succeed in some clear, We look at aspects of ourcreative thinking? Was that experience which we have as athe flavour of what I was up norm taken very much forto? How creatively engaged, granted, taken as being thewith 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 thatnot just clear intellectual we get a sense of ourreasoning, it is as much to do identity. And this practicewith positive emotional asks us to take a fresh lookengagement, and responsiveness at all this, to make ato the skilful. Miccha 'testing of statements on theditthis don't just come in touchstone of conscience'.terms of ideas, they come as We're trying to look moreemotional responses. If we're deeply into the way we assumedoing the practice as it is that we experience life. Domeant to be done, we touch on we agree with our normalthese, and prod these. We're everyday assumptions withwhich we make sense of our important. Because inevitablyexperience? To what extent can in relation to beingwe speak the truth? independent in the doctrine as Cultivate an inquiring, dharma-practitioners, we needcurious mind. We have to to learn to do whatever wereally want to know. need to do to keep ourselvesOtherwise it is merely a on, as it were, the knife'smatter of going through the edge, to keep it sharp. Sopractice by rote. This this will be a very goodpractice is a Sherlock Holmes exercise in discovering how toadventure. Sleuth-like we're do that.following up clues as to the I strongly advide you toreal nature of things. keep a diary of what happens.Although we've got a few It is so easy to think thatpointers, fundamentally it is you'll remember all of whatdown to each of us to happens. But I suspect you'llcreatively use the rough find that your experience isguidelines of the practice to so rich, fertile and full thatengage with discovering the it won't be easy to remember.real nature and 'substance' of If you keep a diary it'll helpour experience. stimulate your reflections. And then I suggest you review5. Work outside the shrine your diary regularly. Everyroom two or three days, go back and

Given the nature of read what you've written; seemeditation in general, and the whether there is any more toparticular Insight character be drawn out, any threads toof this practice, to really be followed up, and so forth.make progress we need to Comment on the trends, anddevote not only time to the make resolutions in relationformal practice in the shrine to what is going on, and keeproom, but also we need to the resolutions! In this wayfollow it up outside of the you'll make sure that you areshrine room. Are we going moving forward in the practicethrough the motions of leaving all the time.the practice at the shrine- You may need also to doroom door, returning to it some background reading. Ifonce every twenty-four hours, you are the kind of person whoor are we practising has that kind of a mind.throughout the day, throughout Actually you may have to doour daily lives, learning to this from a number of pointssee ourselves and our worlds of view. If you are a bitthrough different kinds of dull and sluggish, you'llperspectives? The purpose of probably need stimulating. Orthe meditation is after all to the other hand, if you have anbring about a radical, and intellectually sharp kind ofeventually permanent change in mind, you may need a bit moreus. 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 beactually getting on in terms careful that your readingof the practice. We're not doesn't distract from the maingoing to be having meditation purpose, taking you off downinterviews to prompt us. garden paths, which althoughThere won't be that making us interesting and productive into think or reflect over what their own way, are notis happening. We going to fundamentally helping you tohave to do this each for engage more deeply with theourselves. This is very practice. And above all, keepreflecting over your everydayactivities in the kinds of waythat I'll be trying tostimulate you to reflect inthe formal practice. Use thecommonplace experiences ofeveryday life to flesh out andenrich the practice. So whenyou are brushing your teeth,for instance, notice what itfeels like to have that hardbristle pushing up against

your soft gums. That is thefeeling of the Earth Elementin your mouth. Notice whathappens when you are eating aparticularly lumpy piece ofbread? You can feel the EarthElement crunching around, andyou can feel it turning intoliquid in your mouth. Thesesorts of everyday experiencesare the raw material ofreflections, and upon whichyou can be reflecting as theyare happening. Lastly actively engage inthe process of questioning.You can write questions downfor yourself, and then setabout answering them yourself.Please also write them downand pass them on to me. Inthis way, I can incorporateyour concerns and developinginterests 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 findto look at what we do in the that we repeat the sevenpractice, how we do it, and stages of contemplation sixwhy we do it. In doing so, times in contemplating thewe'll explore something of sequence of all six Elements.background to the nature of 1. Experience ascontemplating, and the nature vividly, and imaginatively asof the six Elements possible the Element in yourthemselves. First of all, bodily experience: 'In my bodywe'll run through the basic is this Element 'X', typicallyoutline of the practice including:' If we approachitself, to remind ourselves of this stage in a verythe brief instructions that stereotyped manner, merelyare given during the formal repeating a formula, nothingpractice by way of an much is going to happen. Sointroductory framework. I it's important to bring theshall be making some brief experience of the Element verycomments as we go through each much alive, and strongly feelsection. its presence within our bodies. And of course this2. A simple outline of the approach applies to the nextpractice stage.The Contemplation of the Six 2. Recognise asElements colourfully and richly asPreparation: possible the same Element ina) in everyday life give the external world. Thissustained attention to a means we have to really lookvariety of personal at the world around us. Weexperiences of the particular have to learn how to look.Element(s). We'll look at And then, Recognise that yourthis later on in this talk. experience of the Elementb) before starting the within your bodily experiencecontemplation, generate strong and in the external world aremetta, and positive emotions. essentially the same: 'In theI hope the importance of this external world, this Elementis clear. It is crucial. The takes a variety of differentfirst four stages could be typical forms, and this is,seen as an extension of the for example, ... how Igeneral requirement of experience them. The Elementcultivating positive emotion. in my body has the sameThis is because as the next characteristics as the Elementsection says, we 'experience outside it.' This is aneach Element as vividly and important equation to make:

imaginatively as possible'. I the experience of the Elementhave quite a bit more to say within our body is essentiallyon this in the next two talks. of the same character as thatThe practice: outside of our body. The We then contemplate each Element will invariably haveof the six Elements in turn, different forms; for instance,starting with Earth and we are not volcanoes orprogressing through to hurricanes, but we doConsciousness. With each experience warm liquids andElement we follow all seven air within us. Then,stages of contemplation, 3. Recognise that theoutlined below, before we move Element in your body comeson to the contemplating the from the Element outside it:next Element in the sequence. 'I experience the Element inIn this way there are seven my body coming from theElement outside it in these temporarily borrowed thisvarious ways:' Element; though constantly 4. Recognise that the coming and going within myElement in your body is experience, it is not to beconstantly returning to the relied on for security, as aElement outside it: 'I safe refuge, so I let go of myexperience the Element in my preoccupation with it andbody constantly returning to possessiveness towards it. Ithe Element outside it in give up my sense of itthese various ways: ' We get belonging to me, of my feelinga sense of being like a on- that it is essentially 'me'."going stream of energy flowing We'll be covering this laterever onwards. And then, in this talk. So then, 5. Recognise that when lastly,you die the Element in the 7. Relax, confidentlybody will finally go back to enjoying and appreciating yourthe Element in the outside experience of the Element asworld, never to return: 'When it comes and goes; letting goI die the Element in my body of it, giving it up, andwill finally return to the becoming free of attachment toElement in the world outside it. We are not denying thatit.' This is really quite the Element is there, and thatstraight-forward: we do not we have an experience of it.have ultimate ownership or But we are trying to come intocontrol over the Elements; we, a new relationship to thatif you like, just borrow them experience. We are changingfor a short period of time. the way in which we organiseOur death really does make ourselves in relation to ourthis point emphatically. In a experience; although of coursesense, we're more an this will, in a sense, alsoexpression of the Elements, change the nature of ourrather than being in experience as well.possession of them and

manipulating them at whim. 3. The three major phases toAnd then, contemplating an Element 6. Recognise that there As will be clear from theis nothing in your experience outline above, when weof the Element with which you contemplate any one of thecan permanently identify and Elements, there are seventhat therefore you can have no stages which we follow. Here,permanent control over or to give an overview of what weownership of the Element: are doing during the"There is nothing in this contemplation, these sevenElement with which I can stages will be subsumed underpermanently identify, and three main headings. We willtherefore call 'I' or 'me'; now look at these threeneither can I really say that headings in turn.I possess it or ultimatelycontrol it; it is not 1. Analysing our experiencefundamentally 'mine'". It is both of ourselves and thenot a matter of merely saying external world in terms of athis to yourself; you have to particular Element.really experience this deeply. We start ourLook for this 'I' that we all contemplation with identifyingthink we are; have a really the characteristics of thegood search for it. Perhaps Element under consideration.you'll find it! But I suspect For instance, we may recallyou'll have a hard job! And that the Earth Element isthen consider: "I have only essentially all that isresistant and solid. We fingers through your hair, oridentify the Element's if you stub your toe on acharacteristics within our own rock. All of these differentexperience of our self and in everyday experiences fleshthe world around us. And we out, so to speak, our actualidentify how our experience of experience of the Earthourselves is made up of a Element. In any of thesecontinuous flow of the experiences it's important toElement, as it were, passing identify the actual feelings,'through us', coming into us, and sensations rather thangoing out of us. It is having an abstract notion ofextremely important that we the experience.don't intellectualise this,but get a genuinely Primary characteristics ofexperiential feel for each one each Element - in briefof these experiences of the What are theElements. We need to feel characteristic sensations ofthis as much with our hearts the different Elements? We'lland imaginations as our look at these briefly. Theintellects. 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 oftenworld. This practice is associate this with thedeliberately structured to be experience of dryness, but insimple, to appeal to our fact the Earth Element is notpractical, down-to-earth, always conterminous with thecommon sense appreciation of experience of dryness.truth; it isn't at all Stubbing our toe is actually ametaphysical about the nature good example of bumping intoof the elements, certainly at the Earth Element.this stage. We accept the The Water Element isElements at the level of everything fluid, liquidy,relative truth. It has to be flowing, soft, cohesive, thatsaid that Earth Element is coheres. The Water Element ismuch more readily accessible often associated with thethan say the Elements of Space experience of wetness; butor Consciousness. There is an again, this is not inevitablyincreasing subtlety to the the case. A good example ofElements, which is the Water Element is standingincreasingly more difficult to in a waterfall: that soft,identify even on this common gushing flow all around. Itsense level. is not that water is purely I stress that its very the Water Element; the Waterimportant to bring to life Element is the experience ofeach Element in terms of our liquid both internally andactual experience. We have to impinging on one from thego out of our way to really outside. Surfing, having afeel each Element. This is hot bath, drinking a cup ofwhy the practice is structured hot cocoa, or the squidgy,as it is. For instance, feel even slimy feel of washing upthe weight and resistance of liquid in ones hands, or oliveyour body as it is sitting on oil in ones mouth are allyour meditation cushion; that examples of experience of theis your actual current Water Element.experience of the Earth And then, the FireElement. And there are all Element is radiant energy. Wesorts of examples such as experience heat, or itsthis: you might run your absence, that is temperature.There are all sorts of ways in thick head feeling on gettingwhich we experience the Fire out of bed after a bad night.Element. For instance, there And then gradually asis the heat rising up off the everything starts to come backbaked earth on a hot into focus, we begin to feel aafternoon: we can feel it bit brighter. That change isdrying us out, we can feel the the experience of the Elementskin on the back of our of Consciousness coming intoshoulders 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 ofis not just air. When we feel the Elements to discoverair going in and out of our their, so to speak, essentialnoses that is certainly the nature; actually they don'texperience of the Air Element. have an essential nature -But the Air Element is more they are empty (sunya) of allthan air in just that simple substance. But to start withsense. It is vibration, we should stay with our verysimultaneous multi-directional obvious down to earth,motion. We infer the activity everyday, practicalof the Air Element at work experiences of each of thewhen we see incense or smoke Elements and work from there.twisting up in the breeze - The Elements are not soits moving in all directions, discrete and separate as themoving in different patterns. practice suggests at firstIt's a much freer expression sight. In other words, I knowof energy than any of the that when air is inhaled thatprevious Elements. some of it is absorbed into The Space Element is that the blood stream. And,which contains the other strictly speaking from aprevious Elements. But it is scientific point of view, itnot just Newtonian space; it is oxygen that comes in and itis much more than that. To is carbon dioxide which goesdescribe just what is meant out. But the practice doesn'tbecomes increasingly need to be informed by thatdifficult. An appreciation sort of knowledge. Yes, it isof the subtlety of the Space true. But the fact is the AirElement requires a Element is given back in someconsiderable subtlety of form or fashion, in one way orperception. And the same another, eventually. And thatapplies to the Element of is the crucial point. It isConsciousness. Consciousness important that you get a senseis awareness; it is that which of where the practice isillumines experience in the heading: our bodieslight of knowing, rather like incorporate the Air Element,the way that light lights up it is an expression of it, thethe darkness. When we turn on body takes the Air Element upa light in a dark room, we into it. The body is doingthen see things we could not this all the time, and itssee before. It's like that. giving the Air Element backAnd there is an 'objective' & all the time. Just as air isa 'subjective' pole to this coming and going from ourexperience. We'll be lungs all the time, likewiseexploring these subjects much the Air Element is literallymore fully later in this flowing in and out of each ofseries of talks. An example us; we are an expression ofof 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 waycharacteristics of our sense the practice is beingexperience, which we have presented causes youchosen to call by these terms intellectual problems, sort'Earth', 'Water' and so forth. them out. Even reword theWe put symbolic labels onto practice; find a way that doesthese key categories of actually work for you in termsexperience. The labels are of getting a strongentirely appropriate: if we experiential feel for each ofwant to describe solidity and the Elements. It may be that,resistance, then the term for you, there is some betterEarth is an excellent way of way of working your way intopointing to what we mean. But the practice. Here, anwe can find in going through important assumption to bearthe practice that, when we use in mind is to come to thethe word Earth, we only think practice as the second andof the soil and the ground we third stages of cultivatingstand on and so forth. It is Wisdom; this means beingnot that we should not think intellectually convinced atof these very obvious least to some considerableexamples, but we should also extent. If you are stillbe aware of the experience of skeptical of the terms inthe Element Earth in other which the practice isways as well, even in more conducted, then you need to bepsychological terms. This is still at the first stage,not an ontological view. It srutramayaprajna, of listeningis quite easy to get confused to and investigating theby this. So we need to bear language of the Dharma. Whenin mind which level of you take up the practice, anddiscourse and experience we practise contemplating in theare attending to at any one true sense of that term, whattime. And of course with you are doing is taking yourfamiliarity, we get used to intellectual convictionreferring to a number of deeper, finding deeperlevels at the same time. emotional equivalents and In explaining the connections to inform andpractice I encouraged you to enrich and vivify your'experience the rocks and the intellectual insight andsoil'; so go out and get some understanding. We are intentof the actual stuff in your on turning intellectualhands: study the experience so conviction into insight.that it is vividly in your We need to beware ofmind. And in doing so, attend making our observations tooto the increasing levels of complex on the one hand; wesubtlety of the experience. also need to beware of makingFeel the physical resistance them too simplistic. There's

and solidity in the very much a middle way to beexperience; and then, go explored. On the one hand, wefurther than just the physical have to look much more deeplysensation in a way which gives into the subtle and richyou a real heart connection nature of our experience,with the psychological and looking beneath the surface ofeven spiritual experience of our experience, askingresistance within our questions, thinking thingsexperience. In this way, the through. But, beware ofphysical experience can come falling into philosophisingto act as a symbol resonating and abstracting. On the otherhand, 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 yourarchetypal nature of the body, that is his body; thissymbols. Some people have body belongs to me, yours tomore precise and complex you, and so on. Nevertheless,minds: they have to get it all the point is that ourexact. So they have to be experiences of the Sixcareful to not turn the Elements are actually verypractice into a discursive much more fluid than wesystem of philosophy. Since usually tend to think of themthe practice is poor as being. So this is what thephilosophy, to do so is to get practice is aiming us todistracted. Take my way of acknowledge: "Look at yourleading as an indication, and experience, it is much morepointer to the way to work. fluid, much moreAlso beware over-simplifying. insubstantial, than you really These remarks conclude my interpret it as being. Canintroduction to the first you really find anything inmajor aspect of contemplating what you actually experiencean Element. There are two of the Element which is reallyfurther major aspects, which essentially 'you'?" The facttake the practice to its is that we just cannotconclusion, and which we will identify in any genuinelynow come to in turn. It is satisfying sense such a thing.very important that we do The main thing to realise ispractise this first aspect that there is nothing in thethoroughly, because it sets up totality of our experiencethe context, the base of the which remains with us all thepyramid as it were. We need time and which could thereforeto have a very vivid, rich and be an inherently lastingcolourful sense of each of the source of identity.Six Elements in terms of what And furthermore we seewe actually experience. It is that these experiences of theonly if we have this that we Elements cannot be owned,can go on to see them more for possessed, or ultimatelywhat they really are, and in controlled. Obviously, in a

doing so let go of our sense, the experience of theattachment to them. Water Element inside you isii. Recognising our inside you, its not insideimpermanence anyone else. It's your In the second major phase digestion, your food, you areof our contemplation of an building it up into your bodyElement we recognise that we and so forth. But theselabel our experience, that we experiences cannot be heldput concepts on it, somewhat onto; these experiences flownecessarily and usefully, but onwards. We really have veryusually in such a way as to little control over suchcause us pain; the pain comes things. It's much more thatfrom being misled by them. they happen to us. OurAnd in particular this phase organism is a temporary coming-of the practice involves together of these Sixrecognising that, within our Elements. Even with aexperiences of any one of the scientific analysis we come toSix Elements, we cannot find see that something asanything with which to apparently substantial as ouridentify in a permanent way, bones are, in fact, goinganything to call 'me' or 'I'. through a cycle of constantThat is not to say we cannot change. We're a bit like atree growing. We can be of the Bark-garment:lulled into a sense of 'Then, Bahiya, thus mustpermanency. But we are, in you train yourself: In thefact, constantly changing, seen only the seen, in thejust as speeded up films of heard only the heard, in thegrowing plants show how imagined just the imagined, indynamic plants are. the cognized just the A famous saying of cognized. Thus you will haveBuddhagosa strikes an no "thereby". That is how youappropriate note for this must train yourself. Now,phase of the practice: 'No Bahiya, when in the seen theredoer 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 theThis view alone is right and imagined, in the cognized justtrue. No god, no Brahma, can the cognized, then, Bahiya, asbe 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 noon conditions all.' "therein", it follows that you will have no "here", oriii. 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 incontemplating an Element is part that we tend not to haveletting go of our a freely appreciative,

possessiveness of, and our unconcerned relationship toidentification with the our experience. Instead, weElement. And in doing so, we normally interpret theallow ourselves to experience elements of our experience inthe Element in a less ego- or terms of a dualisticself-orientated, self- distinction, for instance, inreferential, 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 settingcraving, grasping, and up this dualistic structure ofattachment; we no longer look interpretation, all sorts offor security and refuge in distinctions take on a realitythis mode. We recognise all much more substantial than isthese tendencies within actually the case. Withinourselves, that we tend to be this structure there are twovery preoccupied with crucial reference points ordifferent aspects of our poles, the subjective and theexperience as they relate to objective. All our experienceus, 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 throughpractice we relax into an which we view the world andeasier, freer, appreciative, our lives. Consequently thisunconcerned relationship to is the self-referentialour experience, one which is viewpoint, which has theless self-concerned. In this emotional follow on ofway, we enjoy and appreciate craving, grasping and strongour experience simply for what attachment.it is, allowing it to flowpast and through us. This is 4. Why we contemplateone interpretation of thefamous quote from the Udana of i. Listening, reflecting andthe Buddha's advice to Bahiya meditating. The practice is called can do this.The Contemplation of the Six Firstly, 'The CirclingElements. We practise Wood Pigeons'. Here we setcultivating Insight via the about discovering connections,Threefold Path of Wisdom: images, metaphors in perhapslistening, reflecting and quite an associative manner,meditating. Our purpose is to perhaps 'brain-storming'.work our way through each of Secondly, 'Becoming Thethe two earlier stages towards Bamboo'. This involvesthe goal of an unmediated learning via imaginativemeditation upon the nature of identification with that whichthe Six Elements. To reach is outside ourselves. Forthese purer heights of instance, we may spend somecontemplative thought, we time wondering what it is likenecessarily will have had to to be an ant, watching one go

have worked a lot at the prior about its life in the long antstages of listening and trails on the ground, and soreflecting. on. We try to make the All that was said about imaginative leap and seeingreflection in my talk things from another, even'Listening, Reflecting and radically different, point ofMeditating' applies here. I view.shall briefly recapitulate Thirdly, 'Thesome of the main points here. Kingfisher'. This is where weFirst of all we learn to look, engage in intuitive listening:to pay close attention to our diving immediately into theexperience; we do so in the heart of the matter, like aterms of the primary kingfisher dives into the ponddistinctions of six-fold to catch a fish.analysis which the practice Fourthly, 'The Squirrel'.enjoins. We identify the This refers to how squirrelsElements of Earth, Water, run up and down the branchesFire, Air, Space and of trees; this is a metaphorConsciousness in terms of our for following the branches ofactual experience, and we also logical analysis.develop our intellectual Fifthly, 'Socraticunderstanding of this six-fold Dialogue'. Based on ouranalysis. The latter will actual experience weinvolve studying the relevant investigate the categories oftexts, and listening to talks our thought and tease them outsuch as these. a bit more, challenging the And then, after a certain basis on which we tend toamount of this kind of interpret the world.preparation, we reflect deeply Sixthly, having goneon the nature and significance through all these sorts ofof our actual experience, different types of reflectiveperhaps reflecting in the ways processes in relation to theI suggested in my talk, and Six Elements, and when we feelwhich are summarised below. confident to move on, weI'll quickly remind you of cultivate the third level ofthese. The essence is to the Path of Wisdom. Thisemploy our imaginations in sounds deceptively simple. Weeffecting a synergy of our just sit meditating on aintuition with our capacity to particularly pertinent aspectthink, both associatively, and of experience, such as thewith directed thought. I nature of consciousness. Icoined, borrowing some of likened this to droppingPadmavajra's metaphors, six pebbles, the essential points,over-lapping ways in which we the pith instructions into therelaxed, purified, lucid, calm reorganised our self to thepool 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 setSraddha, being the about systematicallyquintessentially positive cultivating Wisdom. I hope Imental event, purifies all have communicated something ofthose other mental events with the colourfulness andwhich it is associated. This vividness of the process.is likened traditionally to It's not like a dry toughwhen a purifying gem is put ship's biscuit, which is hardinto some cloudy water, it work to masticate. I'mdispels all the cloudiness. talking about the taste of aIn the same kind of way, delightfully rich fruit cake,sraddha associated with this wet with brandy and deliciousreflective activity brings liquors soaked into the fruit,about lucidity and calmness. a mouthful of lusciousnessInto this kind of mind, we which we can really enjoy. I'drop' the distilled essence, hope you'll bear this in mindso to speak, of our as we move on now into thereflections. next section of the talk, It is perhaps a bit like which explains the backgroundrepeating a mantra: resting in from which this contemplationthis state, we can say to our of the Six Elements comes.self over and over again, forinstance, 'Earth ... Earth b. The Argument...' And because we have such An important backgrounda vivid background of for this section of my talk isassociations with such a term, 'The True Nature of allimages come to mind, and Dharmas', Chapter 1 section 12intuitively connections are of 'The Survey of Buddhism'.made. One traditional image The Six Element practicelikens this process to a knob engages in a two-fold attackof butter dissolving into hot on our greatest delusion: thebroth. The hot broth of the notion of an independentmind melts the solid butter of unchanging reality of selfthe distilled essence of (attavada) i.e. our delusionreflection, and gradually the of our self as being noumenalbutter melts, seeping out and or, having a 'fixed, permanentpermeating the broth. In a and substantial' nature. Thissimilar fashion all the words is our fundamental micchaand concepts and early stages ditthi. This is what theof reflection are integrated Buddha was concerned to get usand absorbed. to dig out. And this is what Eventually words are no we should use the Six Elementlonger needed; our minds can practice to do. This wrongbe focused directly to the view is the tap-root of ourunmediated experience of a being: 'amongst all theparticular 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 believeseparate, with a sort of that there is a permanentlyobject of knowledge outside of indivisible and irreducibleus, it becomes something part 'atomic' essence to our self.of us; we will have We have a sense that there isthis 'thing' which we call that we distinguish our sense-'me' which is, as it were, a impressions into what we thinkkind of 'lump', or 'bit', of as being 'in here', andwhich is located somewhere, in label as 'me', and what thinkour brain perhaps, or guts, or of as 'out there', and labelheart, or it's just hovering as 'not-me'. What naturallysomewhere around us, being follows is the distinction ofeither physical or 'mine' and 'not-mine'. Thisincorporeal. Or we may have a is not merely a cool,rather more sophisticated impartial, analyticallyrationale for 'it'. The cognitive process; there aresecond aspect of this wrong strong emotions involved too.view is that we are convinced We become possessive andthat this thing, that we call deeply emotionally engaged'me', is the source of its own with what is 'mine', feelingenergy and life; it is self- very strongly that theresustaining, maintaining its really is a 'independently andown life-force. In other permanently existing me' and awords, we believe that 'me-which-has-things'. Therefundamentally it is not are 'things which belong toconditioned, that it is not me' and 'things which don'tdependent on anything else. belong to me'. In attacking this two- From an Enlightenedfold delusion Buddhaghosa viewpoint, this interpretationdefines dharmas as being, is 'wrong'. In other words,firstly 'without-permanent- albeit relatively 'true', thisessence' (nissata), and view is ultimately false; itsecondly, 'not in themselves is an illusory way of relatingthe source of their own life- to, structuring andenergy' (nijivata). In interpreting our experience.conceptual terms, the purpose It's not that it is completelyof the Six Element practice is wrong; it's not that there isto cultivate this right view. nothing there at all, that we So what is the basic don't exist in any senseconceptual argument employed whatsoever. What is wrong isby the practice? We can come the way in which we relate toat this question in a whole our experience. Structuringnumber of ways. So what our experience is an essentialfollows is just one of these. process within developing self-There is a chaos of sense- awareness. What we have toimpressions pouring in through become increasingly aware of

all our different sense doors is that such structuring isall the time. We have learnt just a device, a tool, ato interpret, and work up our useful means, a system ofexperience of this chaos of metaphors, which can help ussense-impressions into a to be more aware. We tend tocoherent, logically water- forget this and take ourtight, rationally satisfying interpretations far toopicture; it is an apparently literally.stable and convincing picture For example, we call aof an objective world and certain rock in the middle ofourselves in relation to it. the Guhyaloka valley The Hand,Consequently, we have a vivid because it looks very muchsense of a self and a world, like a hand thrusting itselfall 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 tofundamental characteristic of Guhyaloka probably don't thinkthe way we view our world is of this rock as The Hand. Itis only when it is pointed out situation which prompts us toto them that they see it in have this sort of response?that way. Unfortunately, Or, for instance, how do wethere is a tendency after a feel when we get ill or whenwhile to see it exclusively we start to bleed? All sortslike that, to forget that of feelings come up inthere is more to it than that relation to these experiencesparticular hand-like shape. which are much more to do with We need to be careful the way in which we arethat we don't come to see the emotionally attached to thecategories by which we basic constructs of ourinterpret our experience in experience than what a moretoo fixed and substantial a detached understanding wouldkind of way. We see 'things' bring. Or, for instance, whatas being separate from one happens to our mind when weanother. It's not that they get very cold? We can get veryare not, but it is not that tetchy. This sort ofthey are separate either! experience points to howThere is a middle way between dependent we are on reallythe two interpretations; our quite finely tuned parameterslanguage tends to fool us into in relation to who and what wethinking that they are more think we are and how we definesubstantial and distinct than ourselves. Another example isthey actually are. Language 'our space'; for instance, ifstructures our experience for someone is sitting in ourus in a very useful way. But chair, or gets a little bitthen we tend to get hood- too close to us or somethingwinked by the categories of like that, we can feel a bitour 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 someparticularly in relation to people so close to us, and yetwhat 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 experiencedefines us. All this may tell us something about how wesound quite simple and go about making sense ofstraight-forward on the ourselves in relation to theintellectual level. But when so-called objective world thatwe do the practice in the way we perceive around us. Sowe are meant to do it, we often we assume that 'that'sstart 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 toabout structuring our world. look more deeply at theseWe begin to discover how so kinds of frequently habitualoften we're very, very touchy automatic responses. It isin relation to basic also getting to us to see thatdistinctions. our processes of For instance, what do we identification arefeel when someone tells us we conventional and arbitrary.are fat or growing bald or We put so much store by thesesomething of this nature? processes. In effect, we goOften our pride is injured; we for refuge to and gain anstart to check out the enormous amount of securityperception: 'I'm not that fat from our interpretation of the- a little tubby maybe ...' world. The practice isWhat is it about our getting us to see that inperceptions in this sort of doing all of this we limitourselves, and others, and is the sum total of thesethat as a consequence we cause 'bits'. It's not that thereourselves, and others, a lot is something wrong with havingof pain. And furthermore the a sense of identity. It ispractice is getting us to our attachment to thisdiscover that it is much more identity which is being putpleasurable and satisfying to under the spotlight. So webe free of our attachment to start to become aware of howorganising our experience in attached we are to this body,this manner; in other words, and how attached we are tothe practice enables us to see experiencing the world as wehow we can become our own normally experience it throughmasters rather than slaves. the senses of our body; weIf we can develop this kind of become aware of how attachedlooseness to our experience, we are to the sense of a 'me',this kind of freedom, we'll and to possessing, and torise into a very much more liking things, and to notpositive state of mind. liking things, and to liking to be in control. And the

The spatio-analytic and practice helps us to see howdynamic-synthetic approaches. all these 'parts' do not In the Six Element constitute an essential truepractice this twofold delusion nature or an unchangingof attavada is attacked from essence. And we start totwo closely related points of realise how temporary, fluidview: firstly, we view and arbitrary theseourselves, as it were, distinctions are within ourspatially as objects made up experience, that they, inof so called 'parts.' And themselves, don't reallysecondly, we consider our define us. It's not that theyexperience of ourselves are not part of the picture;dynamically and as conditioned it is not that they areby other so called 'things' complete illusions, but weand 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 resolveprogressively analysing ourselves, as a phenomenon-as-ourselves as phenomena-as- event, into the sum of ourfact. In other words, we external relations. Webreak ourselves down into the analyse our experience in suchSix Elements, into six a way as to reveal that we,constituent categories of and the elements of ourexperiences, or heaps of experience of our internalprocesses, which reveals our world, do not live or move bycomposite nature. The their own power; the Sixtraditional image is that of Elements flow into us, throughthe manner in which we can us, and back out into theimaginatively take a chariot outside world. It is not asto pieces, collecting it if we have created any oftogether into wheels, spokes, them; in a sense, we areand so forth. borrowing them from the What becomes apparent is outside world temporarily.that we are attached to the And we also analyse ouridea of 'the whole', that experience and the elementssomehow all these 'bits' make making up our experience ofup something 'more' than just our inner world in such a waythe 'bits'. For instance, we as to reveal that they ariseare attached to the 'me' which in dependence on a complex ofinternal and external impermanence, and hence on toconditions, an inter-related our impermanence. In othernetwork of causal connections. words, taking the Elements to Combining these two be empty, to be devoid of anydifferent approaches within inherent, permanently enduringthe practice, we come to see substance, we acknowledge thatthat our experience of they are constantly coming andourselves and the world is not going. And then secondly, we

at all a straightforward work from the fact of ourmatter; there isn't an constituents' and parts'entirely separate 'me' impermanence to theirstanding aside from other insubstantiality, and hence onseparate 'things'. Instead, to our insubstantiality. Inwe come to appreciate this way we convince ourselvessomething of the rich and of the propositions containedsubtle complexity of different in the premises! In othertypes of processes which are, words, that we are impermanentas it were, flowing through because what we are made up oftime and space, one effecting is insubstantial; and that weanother, and that all of these are insubstantial because whatcontribute to the experience we are made up of isof 'me'. We come to see that impermanent.the arbitrary, conventional Let me attempt to spellanalysis that sees things in this argument out a littlesimple terms is just that. further. We have no 'own- being', no 'self'-mastery, weii. The viparyasas and are not self-originated (whichsunyata is actually a contradictory Another very useful concept) for two reasons.perspective from which to Firstly, this is because weunderstand the dynamic of the are compounded; we are made upSix Element practice is that of the six Elements; we areof the viparyasas. The just the sum of ourpractice involves components, being simply ainvestigating, at least two, momentary collocation ofif not all the viparyasas; we exterior causal factors. Andexamine how we look for the secondly, since these causalpermanent in that which is by factors are constantlynature impermanent, and the changing, we are constantlysubstantial in that which is changing. The materialby nature insubstantial. processes of the body, and In the practice we mental process which make upanalyse our experience of the so called 'mind' do notourselves and the world into belong to us, are not our ownthe parts, or constituents, or because they arise and changeheaps of the four Elements of in dependence on conditionsrupa, that is Earth, Water, over which we have veryFire and Air, and also the little, if any, control.Elements of Space and Because these aspects of ourConsciousness. When we've experience are impermanent,learnt to do this, which is, they can be taken away fromin fact, a bit artificial but us; what can be taken awaynevertheless a useful from us is not our own; whatanalysis, we then progress in is not our own cannot betwo directions simultaneously. regarded as our self. Firstly we work from the The exploration of all

fact of the insubstantiality these Elements in terms ofof our analysed parts and impermanence andconstituents to their insubstantiality is primarilya so called Hinayana exercise. of the Elements of rupa, theThe Six Element practice also level of conditionedleads naturally enough into existence; then we go on tothe development of the first the level of akasha, which isthree levels of sunyata, which fundamentally an Unconditionedis of course a Mahayana dharma; and then we seedevelopment with the same through the difference betweenfundamental purpose. the conditioned and Why should this be Unconditioned by working onsignificant? The experience of Consciousness - if we gosunyata, as spiritual death, through that gatewayis said to be a crucial sufficiently deeply then anyprerequisite to the organic apparent tension betweendevelopment of, what Bhante conditioned and Unconditionedhas termed, the fourth great is resolved.stage of spiritual path and Investigation of FormMeditation, that is of (rupa), that is of the Fourspiritual rebirth. spiritual Elements of Earth, Water, Firerebirth comes about through and Air, eventually leads toawakening of the Bodhicitta, a an understanding of theprogressive communication and emptiness of conditionedre-identifying with the (samskrta-sunyata).Bodhisattva. Hence the Six Investigation of SpaceElement practice lays the (akasha) eventually leads, viaground for this coming into accessing the fourth dhyanaever deeper communication and state of the sphere ofreidentification with the infinite space andBodhisattva. Only if we have incidentally the thirda strong experience of what vimoksa, 'The release calledMr. Chen has called 'the the beautiful (subha)',3 tofires of sunyata', will our an understanding of thesadhana avoid becoming what he emptiness of the Unconditionedsays is just 'vulgar magic'. (asamskrta). Investigation ofConsequently the third treat Consciousness (vijnana), alsostage of the spiritual path via accessing the fourthand meditation, of cultivating dhyana state of the sphere ofsunyata, is an absolutely infinite Consciousness, leadsessential stepping stone, or to an understanding ofplatform, to go on to the next Mahasunayata; thisstage. It is not optional. understanding resolvesSadhana without this is not apparent tension betweencompletely useless - that conditioned (samskrta) andwould be too extreme an Unconditioned (asamskrta). Atassertion; but for sadhana to such a point we apprehend thatact as a focus for the arising consciousness is not limited,

of the Transcendental, it has conditioned by, or confined toto be based in the cultivation any 'object' whatsoever,of sunyata. Sadhana without a whether apparently conditionedstrong experience of the third or Unconditioned. I cannotgreat stage of the spiritual really say very much aboutpath and meditation probably that; it is well beyond evenremains more of a my intellectual capacity!psychological exercise, whichhelps us in terms of samatha. In the practice we havethe possibility of working atever more refined levels ofunderstanding of the nature ofsunyata: 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 Element1. Introduction Today, I want to say something more about how to go aboutworking in the practice, something more about the spirit withwhich we should apply ourselves. And then, I also want to giveyou some hints, a leg-up, so to speak, to start you off with yourinvestigations into the Elements. So I say something about theEarth and Water Elements by way of introducing how we canapproach them.

2. Engaging Creatively As you listen to me leading you through the practice, youmay be developing certain impressions. You may think that whenyou do the practice on your own, what you have to do is to repeatwhat I am saying to yourself in much the same words. This ispartly correct, at least initially. When we first start out, thepractice can certainly be substantially based upon that kind ofdiscursive commentary, just as it can be when we first start outwith the metta bhavana. But, as we become more adept at the practice and moreconfident, we should naturally move on from this earlypreparatory stage. The process of meditating should become moreintuitive, and more spontaneously imaginative. If so, we won'tneed to keep saying sentences over and over again to ourselves inmuch the way that I am talking us through the practice. Perhaps

from time to time, we may need to come back to these morediscursive props as a way of reminding ourselves of the basicformat of the practice. We may need to have resort to therational, conceptual modes occasionally. But, we shouldcertainly not be thinking of staying in these realms all of thetime; far from it. What we trying to do through this practice is to learn a newway of experiencing ourselves and the everyday world which wewalk around in. We're trying to learn how to live in a mythiccontext, in the same sense as we use that term on the MythicContext Retreats at Padmaloka. The phrase 'Mythic Context'indicates the possibility of finding a very important new way ofrelating to ourselves and our experience. It is a bit like whatI was talking about in relation to some earlier talks on theretreat on the Vajra; living in the realm of Vajric or DiamondEssence, where the Vajric essence is sparkling through each andevery thing.

'Scrap-books' One very practical way of helping to broaden out from yourconceptual understanding of the practice and to develop a moreimaginative connection is to keep a note of all associations,examples, and vivid experiences that you have of these differentElements. Build up a colourful 'picture-book, or scrap-book', asit were, with a section for each of the Elements. Make this intoan ongoing project; this is something that you can keep going asa regular practice, in much the same way that you do with anyother spiritual practice that you build into your daily life.Keep adding to your 'collection' of vivid examples whichparticularly 'speak' to you of the Elements. The point is that there is an enormous amount of scope toeach of the Elements. The conceptual definitions are useful, butwe certainly must not leave our understanding of the Elements atthat. If we set out to explore each Element, we will discovermore and more in ever greater depth; they are very mysterious.It is not by chance that one traditional term for the Elements ismahabhuta - The Great Ghost. There is something mercurial andstrange about each of them. At first, they may seem very simpleand straight-forward. But the more that we look into them, themore wonderfully mysterious we will find them to be. I suggest that you can explore your experiences of eachElement in a whole variety of different ways. For example, youcould simply look, and observe, and watch. Or, you could perhapsgo a step further: you could employ one or another of the talentsyou 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 ornot; you may just enjoy the process of making marks, or puttingpaint on paper as a way of expressing something of your

experience. A variation on this is to cut pictures out ofmagazines, and make up collages, or story lines. Or, you may bea bit of a poet; even though you may not wish to read it out toothers, you may have that sort of poetic muse, or voice inside ofyou, which comes from jotting a few inspired phrases down. Or,you may enjoy finding poems, or bits of poems, or literarydescriptions which seem particularly apt at evoking one oranother of the Elements - for instance, there are many finepassages in classical literature which describe Nature. Here isan example which I found that someone had copied out into justsuch 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.4Another example which came to mind is a very vivid and dramaticdescription of a hurricane in Jamaica by E.M. Forester (Ithink). Or, you may be a bit of a story teller yourself, or youmight have a flair for descriptive narrative and can write a goodaccount of something which has happened. An aspect of your explorations could be to dwell on thewidely ranging forms through which any one Elementcharacteristically expresses itself. And then, we can also sensesomething more which goes beyond the immediate sensations, whichalso speaks of what the Element most essentially is. Another possibility is to dwell on the conventional symbolsfor these Elements: cube, sphere, cone and so forth; this mayreveal subtler dimensions in your appreciation of each Element.I came across some notes I had taken from one of Bhante'sseminars on the various geometrical forms of the stupa; Bhantesuggested that we could dwell on these forms in quite a looseway. For example, he said that we could associate ripeness andfertility and richness and summer with the golden yellow cube.Of course, we could make all sorts of other kinds ofassociations, but he just happened to mention these ones as anexample. And it isn't as if we have to just stay with thegeometric shape of the cube; its shape and colour suggests

certain textures, and lightness and so forth. In this way we canexplore our associations with the Element's qualities. Then hetalked of the white sphere as the coolness and purity of themoon, perhaps suggesting harmony. And again the red cone assuggesting the heat of fire, even the passion and energy ofaspiration.

A personal aside I've been encouraging you to look to the poets. This maynot be everybody's cup of tea, but it is one approach which canwork. A couple of days ago I was looking through the CollectedWorks of Shakespeare, and I was reminded of the irony of KingLear's appeal to the elements. There Lear is, no longer ineffect the King, on the 'blasted' heath, and in his anger andfrustration he invokes the elements to do something to hisungrateful daughters. He's deeply and passionately moved. 'Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks; rage, blow. Youcataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drench'd oursteeples, 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 flatthe thick rotundity o' th'world; Crack nature's moulds, allgermens spill at once, That makes ingrateful man. ... Rumblethy bellyful. Spit, fire; spout, rain. Nor rain, wind, thunder,fire, are my daughters. I tax you not, you elements, withunkindness; I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children; Youowe me no subscription. Then let fall your horrible pleasure.Here I stand, your slave, A poor, infirm, weak and despis'd oldman. ...' 5 This situation just struck me as very ironic: this man wasKing and he had succeeded in ordering and structuring not onlyhis own life but the life of the realm. He was the King - so ina very practical sense, he owned everything; he had that divineright; he possessed everything. And now he is howling at thewind and the rain. And yet somehow, in attempting to order thefuture, in trying to bring it into line with what he wanted, thewhole thing fell to pieces, it crumbled away, as inevitably lifedoes. He suffered the fate of so many dictators and people whoset themselves up as those who are going to order the world forthe better. But fortunately or unfortunately depending on howyou look at it, the world won't behave in the way the human mindwants it to; the only predictable thing about Samsara is itsunpredictability. When Lear ignored the message of his own fragility, hereaped the consequences, particularly through trying to controlthe future. Lear is humbled in the implacable face of theelements. And in a sense this is because he hadn't taken theminto account; he hadn't really seen into the deeper nature of

that over which he was King. He had become too puffed up, proudwith his assumed ownership and proprietorship. So, he suffersthe hubris; he received the consequences of that. And that iswhat happens to all of us, unless we learn to delve much moredeeply into the fabric of our worlds and the way that westructure them.

Imagination This sort of imaginative activity is very important. In allthese different kinds of ways you can set out to describe toyourself your actual experience, and come into relationship withit through, in a sense, externalising it to yourself. I want toemphasise the importance of actually engaging with the Elementsin this way as a preparation for the formal meditation. It isone way of engaging with the practice in the right spirit, toenrich it and to enjoy it. If you do so, you'll becomecaptivated by your practice, you'll become increasinglyinterested, fascinated and absorbed in it. We need to engage imaginatively with our experience. Weneed to learn to look, and look again, to see afresh, and then tounderstand more clearly and deeply the nature of our perceptualprocesses: 'what makes me think that something is the way that itseems to be?' On the basis of this sort of process, we learn tomake new connections, both literal and metaphorical; we can startto understand more completely how things are connected, and flowone into the other. And when we start looking in this way, westart to see how the physical sensations of a particularexperience can be a metaphor for something hidden, unseen, howthey can act as a symbolic image for something beyond, whichcannot be immediately apprehended through the six senses. All of this is essential to cultivating the rightperspective for the latter stages of the Contemplation. Actuallythe last stage of 'letting go' won't be so much a letting gobecause the more that we come to appreciate things as theyactually are, the less we have to hang on to what is only anillusion. The less the illusion will distract us fromappreciating the richness and vividness of what is actuallythere. The more that we cultivate this type of awareness right fromthe beginning of the practice, and the more that we live in thisappreciative manner, the more naturally the practice will come tous. The practice won't seem awkward or contrived or strange.It'll just seem increasingly straight-forward. You'll almost beable to just go straight into the last stage of the practice,sitting there happily watching the flow of your experiencepassing by, and knowing that you are not trying to appropriateit, not trying to seek refuge in it. If you do this, the nextfew weeks will be a very rich and exciting and inspiring; you

will be systematically cultivating living in and through yoursenses; you will enjoy becoming more aware and alive to what'sgoing on around you; you will become more poet-like, susceptibleand sensitive to the deeper hidden meanings.

3. The Earth and Water Elements I am now going to conclude this talk by spending some timetalking about the Earth and Water Elements in turn. I hope tospark you off, so to speak; although, I'm sorry to say therewon't be any fireworks. What I have to say is really little morethan a prompt, rather than a performance in itself.

The Earth Element We are familiar with the definition of the Earth Element asbeing that which is solid, resistant, firm, substantial, ungivingand dry like sand in a desert. So we can bring to mind all thedifferent examples of these that we know. And then, as Isuggested earlier, we can ask ourselves questions like, 'Why ayellow cube? What does that tell me about the experience of theElement Earth?' Next we can explore the Element's secondarycharacteristics: colours, textures, shapes. In doing this makesure that you explore the Element through all your differentsenses, that is in terms of sight, sound, touch, taste, andsmell. Through each sense we can find a very particular feel forthe nature and character of the Element. At Guhyaloka we are very fortunate to be living in themountains. 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 Elementexpresses itself here at Guhyaloka. And then, bear in mind that the Earth Element is not justsoil, rock, pebbles and so on. It is much more subtle than theseparticular forms might suggest. For instance, a interestingparadox is ice. Ice is an expression of the Earth Element. Youmight 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 andground down the surrounding mountains. Although this is notexclusively the activity of the Earth Element, we see in aparticularly dramatic way the friction between different formsof the Earth Element as they struggle and fight with one another.Another example is the action of a tree breaking up rock as itsroots work their way through the gaps. There are other expressions of the Earth Element in preciousmetals such as gold, and silver, and precious stones. Eachexample has its own particular flavour which reveals somethingmore about the Earth Element of which they are an expression.

Coal and steel are more examples. There's a lot here to playwith, a lot to discover, a richer and wider perspective on howthe Earth Element finds various different expressions in theworld around us, and within us. And then we should also explore our experience of the EarthElement in our mind. Psychologically, we can encounter the EarthElement in terms of blocked, locked, immovable, lumpy, resistantenergy. Of course such a description conveys a rather negativeview of the Earth Element. But then what are the positiveexpressions of the Earth Element in terms of our minds? The EarthElement could be seen as that which gives form and shape andsubstance. The relationship between 'spirit' and form isimportant 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 thestrength, solidity, imperturbability and power of particularmental states, for example kshanti; this seems to me to speak ofthe Earth Element. We should also explore more poetic associations with theEarth Element. For instance, there is the voluptuous, beautifulEarth goddess, Drdha; what does that figure suggest about thenature of the Earth Element? And then, other Earth-beings such asthe dwarfs in Tolkein's The Hobbit; these are stocky, squatbeings who live under the ground. They somehow express what itis like to be wrapped up with the Earth Element. It struck methat the local farmers around here are very much like this:short, squat, they are baked brown and wrinkled by the sun, theirfat, bulging muscles, and hardened stubby fingers seem to speakof a deep involvement with the Earth Element; and then they havethese bright twinkling eyes, rather like the fire in a preciousstone. These people seem to particularly express the EarthElement in human form. They convey, for instance, a verydifferent impression to that of a male dancer. Another avenue of exploration is the notion of the earthbeing a repository, a seed-house. If you go down to El Morer atthe moment there is a beautiful spread of red poppies and yellowflowers over one of the banks. This has come about through thebank being scraped by a digger revealing a band of earth in whichthere was clearly a large batch of seed. And now its sprung tointo life. This says something about the nature of the EarthElement.

The Water Element The Water Element is everything fluid, liquid, that isflowing, that is soft, that is wet and even slimy, and thatcoheres. We have a strong affinity with the Water Element; afterall 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. Ourbodies seem to drink in water through our skin. There are all sorts of experience which express the WaterElement. For instance, dewdrops all over the grass and trees atPadmaloka in the spring morning sunlight are very beautiful, andthe spiders' webs dripping with dew like diamond and pearlnecklaces. And then the mist; up here the mist creates a verycurious world as it wraps itself around the trees and rocks.Another example is rain over the sea coming out of a great blackstorm crossing over the surface of the ocean. And then, the sea is itself a world of extraordinary lifeand colour. I probably have more associations with the sea thanmany. The colour of the sea in the Bahamas and Bermuda, where Igrew up, is very often a very beautiful, bright emerald andturquoise. The water there often has a particularly lovelytranslucency and depth. You see this in mountain lakes as well.Water also has fascinating reflective qualities. And then, thereis an enormous amount of life going on in the sea: beautifulfishes, corals and so on. The sea also has immense power. Thepower of flowing water is awe-inspiring. Think of waves, even ona calm day there are ripples pulsing through the ocean. Or thinkof the Niagara falls, or the monsoon rains. These expresssomething of the power of the Water Element as it flows from oneform to another. But, of course, it is important to remember that the WaterElement is not just expressed in the phenomena of water. Itfinds expression in other liquids and the forms that they take.There is the viscosity of oils, for example. Hot wax in the lipof 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 inpsychological terms? We experience it as energy flowing from sideto side; a sort of repetitive, cyclical expression. We mightassociate this with rather negative mental states. But are theremore positive associations? The Water Element seems to expressthe mysterious nature of our emotional depths, and the power thatis hidden there. Think of the mythic beings which are said to inhabit thedepths of the psyche: the Nagas. I'm afraid to say I don't knowmuch about Nagas, but they certainly seem to be fascinating andmysterious creatures. The king of the Nagas is said to havelooked after the Perfection of Wisdom before bequeathing it toNargarjuna. We must remember that neither of these Elements, Earth andWater, are mutually exclusive. None of the Elements are mutuallyexclusive. 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 comeup with. For instance, glass is said to be a super-cooledliquid, and over very long periods of time, we can see that itcreeps or flows very slightly. In this sense it is an expressionof the Water Element. At the same time glass is solid andtherefore an expression of the Earth Element. Our own bodies arevery good examples of the combined nature of the Elements. Oursweating skin, for instance, is a obvious tangible example ofEarth and Water Elements. So remember that very rarely will anyone example solely be an expression of just one Element. Butusually in any one example a particular Element will stand out asbeing 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. Conclusion1. Introduction With the Six Element practice we embark upon the third greatstage of Bhante's system of spiritual life and meditation:spiritual death. And it is not surprising to find that the SixElement practice is an organic unfoldment of the two previousstages, Integration and Positive Emotion. Today I want toexplore how the practices of cultivating mindfulness and mettanaturally support, feed and extend into our practice of the SixElement practice. We will see how the Six Element practiceconsciously develops mindfulness and metta as a means toattaining the 'Heart's Release.' The Buddha certainly emphasised the crucial importance ofcultivating mindfulness, or awareness, at all times; it's reallythe quintessential Buddhist virtue. It's interesting to notethat Bhante spent many years concentrating on the mindfulness ofbreathing. We can't have too much mindfulness; there's always

further to be gone in developing it; in one way or another, thedevelopment of awareness or mindfulness should be a constantfactor in our practice of the spiritual life. This is really themain theme of this talk: how awareness is expressed, drawn outand 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 dictionarysati 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 interestingbecause at first sight, it would seem to contradict one of thepurposes of the Six Element practice inasmuch as the practiceworks against a notion of possessing a fixed self. What is meantby self-possession as a dimension of awareness? First of all, weare aware of sense experience flooding in on us; we are self-possessed to the point that we know what is coming through thosedifferent gates of the senses; we know what is happening to usand what is going on around us. We are self-possessed to theextent we are alert, attentive to, and aware of what we are doingin our body, and speech and minds, and aware of what is going onaround us. I'm reminded of the Buddha's pithy words to Bahiya ofthe Bark-garment: 'In the seen, only the seen, in the heard, onlythe heard ...' and so forth. But self-possession is more than just 'bare awareness'. Italso involves knowing our over-riding intentions and motives; itmeans knowing how our current activity serves our sense ofpurpose, ultimately that of attaining Enlightenment. This comesout clearly in the quote from the Samannaphala Sutta given below. To be self-possessed is also to know how we go aboutorganising, structuring and working up the content of ourexperience into the various categories of interpretation, and howwe arrive at certain conclusions, propositions, assumptions,interpretations. In this way, we are aware of the structures ofinterpretation we impose upon our experience, particularly thestructure of a fixed, permanent self. And cultivatingmindfulness in this way means that we become increasingly awarethat our notion of our self simply could be a convenient labelthat we use to describe a vast complex of inter-dependent andconstantly changing processes within our psycho-physical being. But in the Six Element practice we're not trying to get ridof the notion of a self in a crude kind of a way: we're nottrying to kill our egos off; we're not trying to chop ourselvesup, stick ourselves on a bonfire, and heave a huge sigh of reliefas 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 whatwe're doing and how we're doing it.

i. How to cultivate mindfulness? How do we develop mindfulness? In the Samannaphala sutta ofthe Digha Nikaya, the Buddha outlines a complete path toEnlightenment, the lower stages of which, prior to formalmeditation, consist in the cultivation of mindfulness and self-possession: "... And how is the Bhikkhu guarded as to the doorsof his senses? When he sees an object with his eye, he is notentranced in the general appearance or the details of it. Hesets himself to restrain that which might give occasion for evilstates, covetousness and dejection, to flow in over him so longas he dwells unrestrained as to his sense of sight. He keepswatch over his faculty of sight, and he attains mastery over it.Similarly, when he hears a sound with his ear ... And endowedwith this self-restraint as regards the senses, he experienceswithin himself a sense of ease into which no evil state canenter. Thus it is that the Bhikkhu becomes guarded as to thedoors of his senses. And how is the Bhikkhu mindful and self-possessed? In this matter the Bhikkhu, in going forth and comingback, keeps clearly before his mind's eye all that is wrapped uptherein: the immediate object of the act itself, its ethicalsignificance, whether or not it is conducive to the high aim setbefore him, the real facts underlying the mere phenomena of theoutward act. The Bhikkhu is self-possessed in advancing orwithdrawing, in looking forward or looking round, in bending, orstretching his limbs, in wearing his inner and outer robes andbowl, in eating, drinking, masticating, and tasting, in answeringthe calls of nature, in walking, standing, sitting, sleeping,waking, speaking and keeping silence. In all activity he isaware of all it really means. Thus it is that the Bhikkhubecomes mindful and self-possessed ..." 6 One point out of the many that could be drawn from thispassage is that we learn to practise mindfulness in the simple,straight-forward activities of life. We just take what we learnfrom practising the Mindfulness of Breathing and we put that intoeffect in our everyday activities, in such simple affairs asbrushing our teeth, walking around, eating and so on. In allthese simple activities, we just become aware of what we're doingin much the same focused, concentrated way that do when we arewatching our breathing. And in the same way that we enjoy theprocess of breathing, the simple act of air coming in and out ofour body, so we also cultivate an enjoyment of and an ease ofattention in relation to all these other everyday activities. Inthis way we learn to be mindful in a very simple, basic,practical way. We generate a head of steam, so to speak, crankup the dynamo of our awareness, and then with that search-light

of awareness we can turn our attention towards increasinglysubtle experiences, such as those symbolised by the Six Elements.

ii. Working against the hindrances I'm sure we know all too well that cultivating mindfulnessis not easy. We can veer between a variety of extremes. Forinstance there is the extreme of woodenness: the face of a long,sombre, dour, grey kill-joy, the cold super-ego watching over usto see that we never put a foot wrong; the schoolbeak who standsover us with a wagging finger, telling us to be ever so carefulor else something horrible will happen to us. Another extreme isa sort of ebullient, boisterous exuberance: 'what the heck,life's for living!' I think often our difficulties in meditation come about froma lack of systematic cultivation of mindfulness in our dailyround. There isn't this a kind of broad base of mindfulness inour lives. When we sit down we're still bubbling away with thedifferent consequences of the way that we live our lives. So wespend a lot of time trying to calm ourselves down, and arrive andbe present, rather than being actually present enough to get onwith meditating. If we cultivate the Middle Way of genuine mindfulness whatarises 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'tfeel guilty about the past or regret what might have happened inthe past, and we won't be preoccupied with the future. Thesekinds of worries and restlessness just won't be part of ourminds. In fact we'll be free of all the hindrances, and as aconsequence be ready to enter meditation proper. I want to summarise some of these points about mindfulnessbeing an important dimension within contemplating the SixElements. We are, generally speaking, bound up and attached toour way of seeing things. Through becoming more aware of the SixElements within our experience, we disentangle our attachments toour perceptions; we alter our relationship to the data of ourexperience, and hence to our clinging, ego-orientated, self-preoccupied ideas arising in relationship to those data ofexperience. The more fully we see our experience simply as itactually is, the less attached we become to notions we add ontoexperience. As we become increasingly aware that our notion ofour self, and that of our owning or possessing 'things,' is soprovisional and temporary in relation to the continual flow oflife around us, and through us, then we become less attached andclinging. The oscillations in the practice of mindfulness, that isbetween the poles of ebullience and woodenness and the fear oflosing one's self, can be corrected by practising metta bhavana.

Because it is a very special sort of awareness, metta helps tobalance out any inadequacies in our other ways of practisingmindfulness.

3. Cultivating metta My comments here are by way of a reminder. To cultivatemetta is to deliberately develop a certain quality of awareness:imaginative identification. In his discussion of the FirstPrecept in The Ten Pillars of Buddhism, Bhante quotes Shelley assaying, 'love [is]... a going out of our own nature, and anidentification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists inthought, action, or person, not our own. ...' Metta is a leapof imagination, beyond ourselves and our self-preoccupation,which identifies with that which is beautiful in another. We canjoin Keats: 'If a Sparrow come before my Window I take part inits existence and peck about in the gravel.'7 So much isfamiliar ground.

i. Equating self with other Another familiar aspect of cultivating metta is the equatingof our self with others; eventually, we come to feel an equallystrong emotion for the other as we do for our own self, perhapsstronger. Shakespeare expresses this brilliantly in The Phoenixand the Turtle, which Bhante quotes in The Ten Pillars ofBuddhism: '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 inthis particular example. Metta goes far beyond just two people,because we develop a love for all beings equally. This is truemetta as it spreads out beyond 'my' love. This is to cultivatethe love of Mamaki's Wisdom. If we start to develop this kind ofimpartial love for all beings we cut away the roots of conceit,we become conceitless. Our pride in our self is extended to allbeings alike equally; we no longer make comparison with our selfbecause 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 kindof way we find our self one within each, and all within theother.

ii. The poetic dimension of metta What perhaps is not so familiar aspect of metta is Shelley'sconnection of love with imagination and thereby with poetry. 'The great secret of morals is love; ... The greatinstrument of moral good is the imagination; and poetryadministers to the effect by acting upon the cause. Poetryenlarges the circumference of the imagination by replenishing itwith thoughts of ever new delight, which have the power ofattracting and assimilating to their own nature all the otherthoughts, and which form new intervals and interstices whose voidfor ever craves fresh food. Poetry strengthens the faculty whichis the organ of the moral nature of man, in the same manner asexercise strengthens a limb.' (Defence of Poetry) Shelley upholds the value of poetry in the same manner thatBhante pursues his theme in The Religion of Art. What I amsuggesting is that a crucial dimension to the Six Elementpractice is the imaginative and hence the poetic; we needs mustbecome poets. In the exercise I set you to write out how youwould lead someone else through the practice, what I'd reallylike you to do is not to copy the way that I've done it but towrite it in poetry, and best of all in the kind of poetic mannerthat you find in the most sublime poets such as (in English):Shakespeare, Keats and Shelley. If we could communicate how todo the Six Element practice in this form, I think we really wouldhave understood what the practice is about. I feel the manner inwhich I have introduced you to the practice has been ratherpedestrian, rather too earth-bound. Ideally speaking, you wouldhave leapt from that into the realm of the poet, into the realmof imagination. We only really begin to engage with the Elements, theirmystery and wonder, when our reason and emotion come together inthe higher faculty of Imagination. This quote of Coleridge'smakes the point: 'The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the wholesoul of man into activity, with the subordination of itsfaculties to each other, according to their relative worth anddignity. He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity, that blends,and fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magical power towhich we have exclusively appropriated the name Imagination.' The goal and means of the Six Element practice is to givebirth to this higher faculty of Imagination, a higher spiritualfaculty, which apprehends much more deeply and clearly the natureof reality. This reminds me of Lawrence's phrase: '... man inhis wholeness wholly attending'. It is as if we cultivate three levels of awareness: firstlywe 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 seesomething beyond that, or through it, something deeper orsomething higher, something sublime, something archetypal,something perhaps Transcendental, some sort of Truth shiningthrough the situation. I think something of this last level is communicated in alovely 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 heartson is absolutely fundamental. So often we lose heart; we becomebroken hearted if we place them on that which is, by itsimpermanent nature, incapable of satisfying us. Put another way,we place our hearts in the wrong kind of way on that which isintrinsically impermanent, looking for that which cannot be had.The stress on the poetic and imaginative dimensions of awarenessin the Six Element practice is one which encourages us to placeour hearts upon the beautiful. We cannot own the beautiful, wecannot 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 andwater blend' we can develop one mind by empathising with thatwhich is both within us and without us. If we do this we areembodying the spirit of the Six Element practice: we'll generatethe warmth and the colour and the vividness and the vitalitywhich the practice is supposed to have. I'm trying very hard toget across the message that the practice is anything but thecold, rational analytical dissection of life on the mortuarytable. It's not that at all.

4. The heart's release As I just said, so often we place our heart upon that whichis innately unable to satisfy us. We do this through a lack ofawareness. But, through cultivating mindfulness or awareness andmetta we start to see the everyday 'things' of life differently,

and we consequently feel differently; our attitude and emotionschange. In practising the Six Element practice we extend yetfurther our way of cultivating awareness and metta. And so, inengaging in the practice, we transform our emotions yet moreradically. We shall spend the rest of this talk investigatingthe nature of this transformation. Although initially the Six Element practice may appear to bean intellectual exercise, and may involve garnering a lot ofintellectual knowledge, we cannot afford to leave it there. If,as the practice urges us to do, we really do learn to look andsee differently, then a radical emotional shift in ourorientation and outlook will inevitable follow. This is what wecan expect to happen, and to experience in the ongoing warp &woof of our daily lives. Perhaps its a little early for many ofus to have experienced this as yet: we've only been doing thepractice three or four days! But I hope very much over the nextcouple of weeks, particularly in doing the practice on a regularbasis, you will experience perceptible shifts in your emotionalorientation and outlook and in your relationship to yourself andthe world about you. Through developing a greater awareness, coming about throughthe kinds of ways mentioned earlier in this talk, we become lessattached and cling less to our experience; we get less wrapped upin it; we personalise it less; we are no longer as entranced, andas 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 ownsource for the Six Element practice inasmuch as he taught Bhantethe practice, this practice is an antidote to the mental poisonof pride, conceit and even arrogance: the notions that 'I ambetter than, or, equal to, or, worse than another person'. Wecompare our self to others; this is the habit of identifying andowning certain 'parts' of experience in relation to 'others',labelling some 'mine' and others 'not-mine'. Being stronglyrooted within our conditioned nature, this poison is a deep-seated manifestation of the miccha ditthi of attavada; itconstitutes the eighth fetter, which is only broken completely bythe Arhat. Why bother to attack this poison? Presumably you arefamiliar with the myth of Narcissus. Narcissus became infatuatedand entranced with his own image reflected in the surface of apool. He was so fascinated with himself that he became obliviousto all that was around him; he would not even take any notice ofthe beautiful Nymph called Echo, who, having fallen in love withhim, 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. Oneinterpretation is that our preoccupation with our fantasy, orillusion, of an 'I' gradually cuts us off from the richness oflife which surrounds us. In a sense, we may even die from thissickness. Certainly it leads to becoming increasing locked intoan impoverished, mean, narrow humdrum life, which is centredaround avarice, hatred and supporting rationalisation - which isinevitably painful. Pride and conceit is transformed through cultivating theWisdom of Equality, that of Ratnasambhava and his consort Mamaki,whereby we appreciate a Transcendent Beauty that that shinesthrough and in every phenomenon equally. This is very clearlythe consequences of metta bhavana, as is clear from the previoussection of this talk. We are no longer exclusively fascinated byour self. Instead this is the attitude that regards everythingas 'mine', as my own, as precious and valuable, rejoicing,delighting, enjoying everything and everyone, regarding all asour own self. One way to think of cultivating the Wisdom of Equality is onthe basis of Going Forth from the selfishness of beingpreoccupied with and attached to our 'self' and 'our'possessions. We become an akincana, as he is titled in the Palicanon, a 'possessionless one', the man-of-naught, one of theepithets of the Arhant, he who abides free of grasping, even ofhimself, he who leaves no tracks; he is 'a trackless one'. Inowning nothing, paradoxically we own everything; we regardeverything as 'ours'. Being trackless doesn't mean that the arahant ceases toexist! Nirvana isn't an ideal of non-existence. The tracklessone may not appear to exist in any sense that we can apprehend orverify, but that doesn't justify our drawing the conclusion thathe doesn't exist - at least, not as we understand existence tobe. Habitually we experience our self and the world as existingin relation to our delusion of self, of possessing or notpossessing; we leave behind tracks and a trail of wreckage fromour attempts to assert ownership, of an 'I', a 'me', what weregard as 'mine'. We can be tracked on account of that. Oncewe've rid ourselves of this habit, then we've discover what realexistence is; we become that which transcends suchcategorisation. We are free to love deeply every 'thing'equally, to delight in everyone equally, acutely aware of thebeauty shining in all equally. Mamaki's Wisdom is closely associated with her sisterPandaravasini's Wisdom of Discrimination, Pandaravasini being theconsort of Amitabha. From the point of view of the Wisdom ofDiscrimination we see the exquisitely unique nature of all

phenomena, as they come and go, and yet, relate to each instancewith an equal degree of equanimity, seeing that each, in its ownway, expresses Reality equally beautifully. Put conceptually, developing these two Wisdoms is the goalof the Six Element practice; this is where the practice is takingus. Developing the ability to appreciate the uniqueness, thebeauty, the specialness in each and every situation, and yetbeing able to sit loose to all experience, because eachexperience is equally beautiful. There is no need to go runningafter any one particular set of experiences because there isalways another beautiful one to be enjoyed.

ii. Cultivating non-attachment and equanimity There are other useful ways of thinking of the aim of thepractice. In 'negative' terms, we use the Six Element practicehelp to develop non-attachment, disengagement, disentanglement,even disinterestedness. In more 'positive' terms we practice todevelop equanimity, imagination, freedom, and appreciation ofbeauty. 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 alienationon the one hand and attachment or grasping on the other. Byalienation I mean that we're unable, or we refuse, to acknowledgewhat is the feeling content of our experience. In this sense, webecome detached, if you like 'dead from the neck down', refusingto accept the deeper emotional content of our experience. Orperhaps, we're not so much 'dead', but embody Bhante'sdescription of a 'dragon's head, and snake's body'! By attachment or grasping I mean being emotionallyintoxicated with our experience, where we get 'hooked' as wemight get with some drug habit. This can unfortunately happeneven in such a beautifully scenic place as the Guhyaloka valley;we can get addicted to certain aspects of being here: forinstance, the sunsets, or having our particular spot in thevalley to ourselves. Alternatively, we may be attached to aparticular routine that we are used to having: for instance, ourlast cocoa at night, our hot water bottle, or hot milk forbreakfast. If we stop for a moment to reflect, we will see that weactually have so many of these habits. We deliberately set themup, they suit us, they're ours, we feel very comfortable withthem, and if anything comes along which interrupts our enjoymentof them, then we often can get really quite angry. We identifywith particular elements of our experience to such an extent thatwe really believe there is a 'real me' involved who can 'own' andkeep these real, enduring experiences. In this way we fly rightin the face of the viparyasas; we constantly set up our life so

as to deny the flow of impermanence and insubstantiality, gettingourselves caught up in a web of sticky attachments. By contrast the Six Element practice encourages us tocultivate a new attitude towards life: where we get less and lesscaught up with the elements of our experience, happily allowingthem come and go - as they inevitably will do in any event.Consequently life becomes much richer and much fuller than wehabitually experience. Being much more open to the comings andgoings of life, we are no longer so preoccupied with trying to'order' and 'structure' our world to suit us, to make us feelcomfortable. We happily allow the dynamic energy of life to ebband flow. All the anxiety, irritation and desires with which wehabitually preoccupied ourselves dissolve. The practiceencourages us to learn to experience 'what is', and to experienceit as fully and richly as it can be; then we let it go, realisingwe cannot possess, own or control our experience. A sense oflightness and ease comes quite quickly from practising, becausewe relate differently to our experience.

iii. Working with significant examples To work creatively in the Six Element practice, make sureyou are learning from the little things of life: theawkwardnessess, the difficulties, the disappointed expectations,the unmet desires, and so forth, where we get a bit upset, orirritated or frustrated in one form or fashion. Bring into thepractice your preoccupations of the moment, whatever actuallyintoxicates you, ensnares, entrances you - examine these examplesunder the auspices of the practice, trying to really understandmore deeply just what it is you're looking for, what'sfascinating you, what holds your attention, what's getting yougoing in relation to any one particular example. Be sure toavoid using safe examples; these are OK to start with, but bemore 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, orthere isn't any more of a particular type of herb tea you arefond of having? Investigate what is happening in these kinds ofminor reactions; we see them as little pointers, teachings aboutthis basic conceit of 'me' and 'mine'. Take for example the wayyou like your breakfast in the morning: some of us have a veryparticular breakfast routine which we just hate being disturbedin any kind of way whatsoever. Or, our last cup of 'something'at night - it has to be just 'right'. What is it about all ofthis which is so important to us? Why do we invest so much ofourselves. Food is quite a good area for examples because we areactually very tied up with it. Sex is another area - perhaps notthe 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 curiousactivity which draws us so strongly? Or, what about the clotheswe wear? Most of us have a quite particular sense of dress andstyle, having strong preferences for what 'suits' us, and whatdoesn't; we like the way we dress and wouldn't 'be seen dead in'something that someone else may be wearing; 'OK on them'. Whatis it about this which is so important to us? Perhaps some ofthese examples may seem rather too complex to fit into youractual Six Element practice. A simpler example is our hair orthe shape of our body; what is it about these that we like ordon't like and why is it that we can get upset when someone makesout we're growing bald or too fat or podgy, or too thin orskinny? Why are we so proud, why are we so touchy, why do we takeoffence?

5. Conclusion This afternoon we have explored how the Six Element practiceis an application of awareness, as most particularly experiencedin terms of metta bhavana. I hope that I have communicatedsomething of a richer and more elastic and flexible approach tothe Six Element practice. I hope that gradually, over the nextfew days as I leave you more and more to lead yourselves throughthe practice, you will find your own way, poet-like, into anincreasingly 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 intothe six Elements; we divide it into constituent parts orcategories or compounds. And then, we look at each constituentpart in turn. Broadly speaking, the six Elements fall into oneof two major categories, (not that they are entirely distinct),that of: nama and rupa, that is, of mind and matter, or mind andform. Rupa comprises the first four Elements of Earth, Water,Fire and Air. Nama is comprised of the remaining Elements ofSpace and Consciousness. In the next two talks we will explorethe nature of rupa, and in particular the Elements of Earth,Water, Fire and Air, otherwise known as the mahabhutas. In theremaining talks we will explore the nature of the Elements Space(akasha) and Consciousness (vijnana). To experience rupa there must be samjna i.e. Perception, oras Bhante translates it, 'interpretation'. Since in the SixElement practice we explicitly explore the nature of Rupa, weimplicitly investigate the nature of our perceptual processes,and the way that we go about making sense of our experience toourselves. By the by, you will be aware that rupa, samjna, andvijnana are three of the skandhas. Since the other two skandhas,vedana and samskara are inevitably bound up with these three, theSix Element practice is a practical exploration and meditationupon this basic Buddhist categorisation of the five skandhas. Later on in this talk we will discuss the definition ofrupa, as being the objective content of our perception, and inthe next talk go onto investigate in more depth the nature of theElements of which rupa is composed. To start with, we will lookat the general nature of how we interpret and perceive and goabout making sense of our experience to ourselves.

2. The nature of our perceptual processi. The mercurial nature of perception On a certain level our experience of life seems verystraight-forward. For example, when we pour tea into our mug, itusually stays there - we've come to expect that to happen. Orwhen we open a door, we anticipate that there's a space on theother side into which we can walk; it would come as a realsurprise to bump into a wall stopping us walking through thedoorway. So yes, generally speaking, the natural perceptions oflife seem very obvious, common-sense and down-to-earth. But just occasionally we get glimpses that things aren'twhat they seem, and we get a sense that we only see things fromour own very particular point of view. For example, I wassitting at the dining room table, and I suddenly thought tomyself, 'That's Llam up there! ... But it can't be; you can'tsee Llam from here! It must be the Rock of Ages.' [Llam is one ofthe highest mountains in the Guhyaloka area. The Rock of Ages is

the rocky eastern ridge to the valley]. I've been coming herefor eight years. And I'd always assumed that Llam was invisiblefrom the Retreat Centre; in fact, I'd checked it out more thanonce, and so I was convinced that that was the case. And becauseI was convinced of this, I didn't see Yam. I had always assumedthat what appeared to me to be one continuous mountain ridge wasjust that. But, in fact, it is two, one in front of another. Sowhen yesterday, quite miraculously, Yam suddenly appeared behindthe Rock of Ages, I was more than a little surprised! Once seen,it is crystal clear. Subhuti gives another example of how we cannot always takeour perception for granted. One day he found himself at the endof the valley in thick mist. He describes how he was sitting onthe rocks there and realised that the rocks was all that heactually knew to be there at that moment - there was nothing elsearound him except the mist. He describes how he started tothink, 'Is there a way off here? Of course there is, I know thatthere is a valley down there! But I can't see it.' He describesthe disconcerting experience of knowing that there is a valleythere, but at the same time not being able to actually see it.There was a discontinuity between what his immediate senses weretelling him and his certain knowledge that there is a valley downthere somewhere; eventually, he just had to plunge off into themist, and find it. I have another example of a commonly experienced change inperception. The other night we had been talking about snakes inthe Order meeting. I came out of my hut at four in the morningfor a pee. It was a very brightly moonlit night. Suddenly I sawthis snake; I jumped backwards. And then, of course, I realisedthat 'it' was far too straight to be a snake; it was a long stickI'd left outside my door, which had fallen over. Another example from one of Subhuti's talks: we see a treeon a hillside, and we start to think, 'ah yes, there are itsbranches; I wonder what it is? Ah, it must be a chestnut; nomaybe not, its branches look a little too vertical, perhaps its apine.' And then the tree moves; 'oh, of course, it's not a tree,it's a goat!' And then, we go into a whole thing about how it's agoat, and eventually discover it's actually a man. All these examples are commonplace enough. What'sinteresting is that although for the most part we interpret lifeaccurately enough, just occasionally something happens to suggestthat we are only seeing a small part of the whole, or we areseeing things in black and white, when actually they're rich witha thousand hues. We can be so easily fooled - and that is animportant point to acknowledge. Either we don't accuratelyregister or interpret what our senses are telling us, or we havea predisposition to interpret the content of our sense experiencein certain habitual ways which attribute to it either more or

less than what is actually there. As an analogy for this, Subhuti talked of 'the ship in theseafog'. Imagine you are at sea in a dinghy, and it's veryfoggy, and you hear a sound: 'blaarh', and then you see a lightflashing. On the basis of what you hear and see you make theassumption that it is a fog-horn and it is coming from a ship'slantern, and that there is a ship out there with friendly peopleon it trying to communicate in such a way as to not run you over.This, in fact, would be quite an ordinary experience foryachtsmen in the Solent where there are lots of big ships goingup and down the English Channel. The important point is that allthat you actually hear and see is a noise and a flashing light.The notion of a fog-horn and a lantern which is attached to areal ship, with people on it, who are purposefully sending outthese 'signals' to tell you that they are friendly and don't wantto bump into you is what you add on to the raw data of theexperience; it is actually pure conjecture, an informed guess, oropinion, albeit probably a well-informed one. The nature of our perception is an odd business! But we dohave the capacity to adopt a wide range of interpretativeconventions. For instance, we don't quibble with painters, withthe scenes that they paint, or for that matter evenphotographers; we don't argue with the fact that the paintings orphotographs don't actually correspond exactly with, say, how thelandscapes are when we see them in front of us. We receive sensory input all the time, and then work it upinto a story of real objects existing through time and space.This interpretative, perceptual capacity is the awe-inspiringwonder of the human mind at work. On the every day level ofcommonsense, more often than not it works very well. But if weinsist that our perception is an ultimately true source ofreliable information about the world, it is a bit like a man whosees a UFO and then insists that we are all about to be attackedby aliens from outer space; i.e. he jumps from seeing somethingunusual flying through the sky to a whole story that is built uparound that. Our perception, and the language we use to describeit, is for the most part reliably adequate for our everydaypurposes; but we can tend to get trapped by it into thinking thatit describes reality quite literally, and entirely adequately.We forget the metaphorical, inevitably provisional and tentativenature of our perceptions and the language we use to describethem. For instance, to quote an example Guenther uses: 'the sun issetting' is a meaningful statement for two people standing invery much the same geographical spot. The language aptly conveysan experience. But for someone a fifty miles, or hundred milesWest the sun is not yet setting. Every now and again it'ssalutary to remember that the sun is constantly rising and

setting for someone somewhere. There is no harm in usinglanguage in the conventional manner so long as we understand itsprovisional nature.

ii. Reframing the emotional content of our perceptions The Six Element practice directs us to look at the way westructure, pattern, and interpret our experience, and toexperience sensations in their 'raw' form. In the practice welearn to look, hear, feel, taste and touch, not so much again,but afresh; we are asked to learn to experience much more clearlywhat is happening, before we start to work it up into something'more'. Put like this, it might sound rather coolly rational.But it is important that we use the practice to take a fresh lookat that to which we are particularly attached. We will remainunmoved by the practice if we only use examples to which we'reactually emotionally indifferent. If we use such examples, ourpractice will be intellectually interesting, but it won't reallytouch us, or even frighten us, or get down to our guts. On the other hand if we use examples of things to which wereally are attached, we are forced to confront their ephemeraland evanescent nature; strangely, there is something about thenature of being attached which makes things seem much more solidand permanent than they actually are. The more accurate anunderstanding we have of what we are actually craving for, andthe less we are building up supporting rationalisations for thosecravings, the more likely we are to want to break those cravingsas a habit; the more likely we are to see them for what they are:craving. After all a man is more likely to go on banging hishead against a brick wall if he can convince himself that itsgood for him. As we start to undermine the rationalisation thatwe build to support our cravings, the strength of attraction ofour habitual intoxicants does start to diminish. We do have tomake a choice at some point to break the habit. If we can seemore accurately these habits for what they are, then it is mucheasier to make a clean break.

iii. A provisional perceptual framework When we analyse the nature of our perception we begin todistinguish a sequential process which starts out with thereception of 'raw data of sensory input' in the various senseorgans. This raw data is immediately filtered by the senseorgans, so that certain data is received as significant, and therest is ignored. For example, some animals can smell smellsemanating from, or see something of, an object that we cannot,even though the sense data comes from apparently the same objectwe perceive in other ways. The activity of filtering isconditioned by the capability of the specific organ. Filteringsubsequently continues at a higher level of consciousness where

we effectively decide what we wish to attend to, whether we dothis unconsciously, semi-consciously or consciously. The processthen continues to interpretation: we recognise the experience inrelation to a preexisting frame of reference. So we start tolabel and name different aspects of the experience: 'ah yes,that's a man, that's a tree, that's a goat.' The next step in thesequence is attributing particular meaning and significance todifferent parts of 'the picture', scaling that in a hierarchy ofpriority, and generally choosing to attend closely to that whichis of highest value. All of this of course happens very, veryquickly, at times in a flash of a moment. And often it happensautomatically; we are not particularly conscious of how we havearrived at certain conclusions. Often we jump to conclusions; and we usually do so on thebasis of scanty evidence. In this connection I am reminded ofthe Case of Dysentery, when the Buddha discovered a sick bhikkhulying in his own excrement. The Buddha deliberately ascertainedthe full facts of what had happened before he made anypronouncements as to whether what had happened was right orwrong, should or should not have happened. So often, we justdon't do this. I remember, for example, there was an occasion earlier onthe retreat when a couple of us were rather late for a talk and Igave them a bit of a ticking off. Afterwards, I realised that Ididn't actually find out what they'd been up to. I madeassumptions. Of course I thought I'd made the right assumptionsbased on some very immediate sense experiences. But, the fact isI'd made a story up out of some sounds. I never found outwhether I was correct in my assumptions or not. The point I wantto make is that I didn't actually check out whether myinterpretation of the basic sense data was the correctinterpretation or not. I've noticed that I actually do this alot of the time. As it happens I'm often right; my intuition isa useful talent which short-cuts the tedium of constantly have todouble-check. But we need to be aware we're doing this; we needto be aware when it's appropriate to check out our intuitiveassumptions and interpretations. My description of the levels of our perceptual process israther rough; the Abhidharma has its own description of theseventeen different moments that comprise a moment ofconsciousness. So clearly we could explore the process in muchmore detail. It is important to realise that, in the course ofour practice of the Six Element practice, we become conscious ofhow we go about perceiving. In doing so, we can simply rely onour powers of observation of the empirical evidence; in manyrespects this is best. And we can supplement this with whateverother knowledge, scientific or otherwise, we have or may chooseto learn for the purpose. This is necessary preparatory work for

our formal contemplation: to learn how to make ever finerdistinctions within our own experience of our perceptual process. Developing our abilities in this respect is actuallyfascinating and highly enjoyable: we discover the wonderfullymysterious, awe-inspiring nature of our selves and the world welive in. For example, when we discover that grass is not justgreen, and the soil not just brown, then we may discover a wholeworld of other colours, shades and hues, which we have never seenthere before. In this sense it is a bit like a colour-blind mandeveloping colour vision; whole new vistas of possibilities openup.

iv. Categorising To categorise, to make comparisons and assign 'things' tocategories, is essential to our normal mode of perception. Wedecide and label 'this' is like 'that', and not like 'that', sothat 'this' is one of 'those', and 'that' is one of 'these'.When we assign a 'thing' to a particular category, it willundoubtedly be related to other categories. There are evenhierarchies of categories, e.g. species, genus, family, order,class, phylum, kingdom. Categorising is after all one of the basic structuresinherent in language. Being able to do this, to the extent thatwe humans can, was actually a major evolutionary step forward,and an essential step in the road towards full self-consciousness; a child learns afresh how to do this from a veryearly age. Unfortunately we tend to forget that we structure, organiseand pattern of our sense experience - or, perhaps it's not somuch that we forget, but we are only dimly conscious of doing so.Through our lack of awareness we become convinced that ourinterpretation can be the only way of interpreting, seeing,feeling and experiencing whatever is going on: 'it's so obvious -there it is, in black and white, staring you right in the face!'We fail to see that we are choosing one of a number of possibleinterpretations, and that, in doing so, we often ignore theexistence of those other possibilities; we, in effect, insistthat our perception is absolutely real. We also tend to jump to conclusions prematurely based onmaking rapid generalisations: 'this is one of these kinds ofsituations, I've been here before'. In other words, we lumpsomething into an assumed category before we've really lookedcarefully to see if it really does belong to the particularcategory that we are going to lump it in with. 'It's got to beeither 'this', or 'that'; since it's not this, it's got to bethat'. Other people's motives are a prime example: 'he's doingit for this or that reason; he's late again! Well, we all knowthat's because he's lazy; he lies in bed far too long!' But we

don't know; there might be all sorts of reasons why someonehappened to be late on a particular occasion. In this way we become the victims, rather than the masters,of our own ability to categorise: the mystery of life escapesthrough our fingers like water. We narrow down the breadth,depth, richness and 'colour' of what could be experienced; welimit, restrict, box in and define the range of our possibleexperience. A substantial motive for continuing to deceiveourselves in this way is that, by assuring ourselves that ourcategories are for real, in pinning, fixing 'things' down,fitting things 'into place' so we've 'got it', we feel safe. Wefeel as if we 'possess' our experience: 'I know; I've got it; andnow it's crystal clear, I can relax'. And what is known can becontrolled and therefore is amenable to our will. Do you see thestrong emotional impetus which turns our categories intoabsolutes? If we convince ourselves of the ultimate validity ofour categories, including that of a 'me' who feels it, theneverything is so much more solid and dependably fixed, and feelsright, and so therefore we can settle back, relax, and feel safeand secure in knowing where everything is. But actually we areliving all the time in a mysterious, unknowable world. When I was thinking about this, I was reminded of Caliban'sadvice to ship-wrecked Trinculo - to get in my Shakespearianreference for the day. Unfortunately, I haven't time to tell youthe whole story of the Tempest! Suffice it to say that somesailors are ship-wrecked on this magical island and they bumpinto a very strange creature called Caliban who is the son of awitch, a sort of nature-spirit, who tries to calm Trinculo'sfears of the strangeness of the island. This is what Calibansays to him: 'Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.Sometimes a thousand twangling instrumentsWill hum about mine ears; and sometime voicesThat, if I then had wak'd after long sleep,Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,The clouds methought would open and show richesReady to drop upon me, that, when I wak'd, I cried to dream again.' 8 We choose our mode of perception. It is a choice. So oftenwe persuade ourselves that there isn't a choice, that the waythat we see things is the only way. Buddhism is saying there isa vast number of different ways of perceiving life. We beguileourselves with rational and scientific thinking. I'm reminded ofBhante's essay 'Buddhism and William Blake' in his bookAlternative Traditions (p.185). Blake saw life very differentlyfrom his avowed enemies Bacon, Newton and Locke, some of thefounding fathers of modern Western philosophy and science. I do

not have time now to elaborate on Blake's vision of Man, whichwas worked out in some considerable detail. The point I want tomake is that Blake is an inspiring example to us of taking hisperceptual processes in hand and consciously re-educating himselfto awaken what he called his Imagination or Humanity from its'deadly sleep' and thereby enter a process of self-transformation. There are some very interesting correspondences,which Bhante draws out in the essay, between Blake's system ofthe Four Zoas and so forth and the Five Jinas. Blake lived in avery ordinary kind of mundane world: that of late eighteenthcentury London, which in many ways was fairly grubby. And yet,he saw great beauty, at the same time as the ugliness that wasalso there. Familiarising ourselves with Blake's work gives us awindow through which to glimpse what it means to master ourperceptual process, and thereby the master of our destiny. This is integral to our main purpose. We will, in fact, becultivating Wisdom, since as Bhante defines it, Wisdom is'aesthetic, analytical appreciation' 9 Our capacity to analysecombined with aesthetic sensibility fuses together inappreciating, delighting in and fascination with what is actuallythere. In effect, we create a new mode of consciousness, a newmode of being, a new way of experiencing the world of our senses;this is a very different way to think of cultivating Wisdom thanwe might be accustomed to.3. What is rupa?i. Defining our terms My remarks, so far, have been of a rather general nature. Iwant to move on now to investigate what we mean when we say thatthere that there really is something out there which we areperceiving. Let's state the obvious. As Guenther says, 'WhatBuddhism asserts and what everyone will be agreed upon, is thatthere are perceptual situations, in which we claim to be incognitive contact with something other than ourselves.' 10 Thisis a good starting point. When we perceive this 'something other' through our sensesas intractable and resistant to our immediate control, that,according to Bhante, is rupa. That intractability and resistanceis the objective content of our perception; this is effectivelyGuenther's definition of rupa. By contrast, there is alsosomething within our experience over which we feel we can havecontrol, that we can influence; we may refer to this as thesubjective pole of experience. Take for example when I can kickthis rock. Being as large as it is, nothing much happens -except I get a sore foot! It is intractable to, and resists, myinfluence; I certainly have very limited, if any, control overit. My experience of the rock is the objective content of myperception of it; it is my immediate experience of rupa withinthe situation. At the same time, I may feel frustrated, angry or

whatever - that is part of the subjective pole of my experience,because I do have some measure of control over how I feel aboutit. This seems straight-forward enough. But beyond this, thingsget complicated rather rapidly. This 'something other' is anepistemological object; it is an object which is known by a self,i.e. a 'me'. However, as Guenther continues to say, '... theexistence or presence of an epistemological object does notguarantee that there exists an ontological object whichcorresponds accurately to [it] ...' 11 To make this clear let'stake an example: I see this microphone in front of me; themicrophone is the epistemological object of my perception. Icould go on to make the assumption of the microphone existing asan ontological object if I think of it existing independently ofmy perception of it, or existing in some pure ideal sensedistinct from the immediate phenomena, as somehow having someessence or being which exists either outside, or beyond, orbehind, or inside, or above the epistemological object of myperception, and that that is its real nature. This is to reifythe evanescent nature of the phenomena of my perception, tomaterialise it into an 'idea-thing', which exists solely as anidea, and cannot be known empirically i.e. to assert a noumenalexistence. I think this is what is going on in the 'designer God'argument. What seems to happen is that people infer from theirexperience of a designer who creates an object of great beautythat in a similar way someone must have designed and createdNature. It is the same ontological thinking we apply to ourselves writ large on a universal scale. Buddhism denies the validity of ontological thinking.Subhuti in his 1992 talks on the practice was at pains to remindhis audience that for Buddhism an ontological 'objective content'to our perception does not exist - that is just pure conjecture.Instead, Buddhism asserts that there is a content of ourexperience which appears to 'present itself' to us as 'objective'- this is rupa. The 'objective contents' derive from the sensedata we perceive: for example, the noise and lights that weattribute to the fog-horn and fog-lamp. Within our perceptionsthere are only epistemological objects - and a epistemologicalsubject - this view accords with modern physicists'acknowledgement that the observer influences that which isobserved. Buddhism attacks our habit of attributing a ontologicalstatus to our self. We usually think of our selves asontological: as existing in some pure sense 'above' our changingexperience of our selves, as somehow, in essence, independent ofconditions, enduring substantially and permanently. Buddhismacknowledges that yes, there is an epistemological subject;

there's a 'me' who exists in the conventional sense, who walksaround from here to there, but who only does so in a conventionalsense. But, to assert that, behind the changing current of thephenomena of 'me', which changes from one situation to another,there is a substantial, enduring 'me' is a just a fiction; it isjust a mistake. A mistake which we are all very much in thegrips of, according to the Enlightened perspective. It is onlyan idea; that is all it is. But we have this sense that there isa 'me' or 'I' which somehow stands 'outside' of the experience,looking in. This is why it is so difficult to find the 'I' inour experience; we go looking for it, but it isn't actuallythere. And then because we have this sense that we're looking infrom the outside of our experience we try to get outside of it tofind what it's looking into it. But it's impossible to getoutside of our experience to find it! Buddhism asserts that generally speaking there is just the'perceptual situation', in which there are two aspects. Oneaspect seems to belong to the subject and the other seems tobelong to the object. It isn't easy or perhaps even necessary todefine exactly which belongs to which. We just simply assertthat there seems to be something which is 'out there', andsomething which seems to be quite definitely 'in here'. In ourpractice of the Six Element practice we train ourselves to seethe 'objective' pole of our perceived experience as simply that,i.e. as a seemingly or apparently 'objective' aspect of ourexperience. Rupa is that content of our experience which isapparently outside or resistant to our immediate influence, butwhich is inevitably linked to the 'subjective' pole, i.e.inevitably linked to what we think of as the 'me' doing theperceiving or having the experience. For example, in looking at one of these trees, we learn torecognise that its seeming solidity and independence of us isjust rupa, i.e. it is just the objective content of ourperceptual experience. In learning to do this, since we willhave to learn how to look much more acutely than we probably doat present, we'll learn to recognise, much more clearly andvividly than we usually do, that our experience of the tree isshifting and changing all the time e.g. as a consequence of thechange in light as the wind blows through the branches. Do yousee what I mean? Even quite a simple example like a tree, we tendto think, 'Well, it's there', regardless of whether we're lookingat it or not.' I'm not going to now argue that it isn't there!But we do tend to think of the tree as being something outside ofour perception, as being completely independent of whether we'reexperiencing it or not. But actually every time we experienceit, we experience it afresh and as new. This is not to say that the tree is therefore merely an ideaof ours, and therefore that it doesn't really exist; but in what

sense it really exists outside of our immediate perceptualexperience of it existing is extremely difficult to say. Andeven the fact that a number of us share a similar experience, butnot exactly the same one, of a particular tree, so that even ifI'm not here, but you are and you still experience it when Idon't, doesn't really help us get any further down the road ofdiscovering in what sense the tree exists outside of perceptualsituations in general. To explore this line of enquiry seems totake us down the road of metaphysics which is not actually whatBuddhism is primarily interested in exploring. There probably isa Buddhist answer to this, but I'm not currently aware of it.

ii. Clarifying the meaning of the word 'objective' Before moving on I want to just spend a little time on theterm 'objective'. According the Collins Dictionary, the firstdefinition is 'existing independently of perception or of anindividual's conceptions'. Another meaning cited is 'reality'.And the term 'subjective' is defined as 'belonging to, proceedingfrom or relating to the mind of the thinking subject and not thenature of the object being considered'; and also as 'existingonly as perceived and not as a thing in itself.' Consequently ifwe are to use this term 'objective' as in the phrase 'objectivecontents of the perceptual situation', it's important to remindourselves of just what we mean, given that the dictionarydefinitions, general connotations, and comparing it with thedefinition of the term subjective, all point to a ratherdifferent understanding of the term 'objective' to the one thatwe really mean to convey. In other words, what we mean by'objective' is more what the dictionary says is the meaning of'subjective'! And when we hear the word 'objective', because incommon parlance it has this connotation of reality and as beingsomething which exists outside of perception, so we then tendthink of the objective contents of our perception as beingoutside of our perceptions, which is precisely the bad habitwe're trying to break. When we use the phrase 'objective contents of the perceptualsituation' as defining the nature of Rupa, we do not mean allthose dimensions of our experience which are real, in the senseof being ultimately true, and that everything else in ourperceptions is unreal, false and a mere empty illusion. That isnot what we mean when we use this phrase. But this is what weare tempted to think, given the dictionary definition, and itsprevalence in our language.

4. Conclusion: The simple, yet crucial, point I want to make is that weinevitably organise, pattern, structure and categorise ourexperience - this is one of our greatest human qualities, but

also our greatest Achilles' heel. We necessarily interpret. Wedo this all the time; it takes some considerable skill torecognise how we are doing it. Probably the most basic categories within which we interpretour experience is into 'objective' and 'subjective': that 'this'is 'in-here', i.e. 'me', and 'that' is 'out-there', i.e. 'not-me'. Making these distinctions is so fundamental to our way ofviewing the world that it seems very obvious and straight-forward. But, especially if we start to pay closer attention tohow we go about making this distinction, we can begin to get asense of how provisional our perceptions really are. Apparently the exact nature of how we interpret is stronglyculturally conditioned, so that people from different culturescan get quite confused by the results of one another'scategorising. Subhuti gives the example of how the NorthAmerican Indians' notion of territory differed very substantiallyto that of nineteenth century redneck Yankees, so much so that,when they made treaties as to land rights, they had verydifferent conceptions of what the letter of the agreementactually meant. Subsequently they got very angry with oneanother because as far as they could see there was no honour inthe opposing party. The human 'problem' comes from taking apart something thatis a whole and splitting it up for the purposes ofcategorisation. It is actually impossible to isolate objectiveconstituents of the perceptual situation from subjectiveconstituents. It cannot be done in an absolute way, becausesubjective and objective constituents are part of the oneexperience. So how we do decide what belongs to subject and what toobject? Apparently, even ancient Indian Buddhists couldn't reallycome to very specific definition. Guenther concludes that the'wide range of meaning of the term rupa, extending from anobjective constituent of a perceptual situation to aninterpretive concept, made it particularly unsuited as an aid toclear thinking, and as a consequence to the communication ofthought'. 12 Eventually the definition of rupa came to be a verygeneral one: it was simply restricted to 'the objective contentof the perceptual situation', divided into the Elements, on whichall schools seemed to agree as existing, and a number ofsecondary qualities therefrom derived, the exact nature of whichvaried greatly from school to school. We'll come to thesedetails in the next talk.

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 1. Introduction We are in the midst of discussing the nature of rupa, theintractable and resistant content of our perception which isoutside of our immediate control. Rupa is the first four of thesix Elements: the Earth, Water, Fire and Air Elements. Each ofthese Elements is has what are termed secondary qualities. Wewill continue with our discussion of rupa through examining thenature of the Elements, and then their secondary qualities.Before we do that I want to go into whether rupa has theeveryday connotation of material matter.

'Matter' At the beginning of the previous talk I mentioned that theSix Elements fall into one of two categories: nama or rupa, whichcan be translated as mind or matter. If rupa is translated inthis way we can get confused, because we immediately think ofmatter in the scientific sense. But rupa is not matter in thesense of being a specific 'thing' or a 'phenomenon', but is to beunderstood as a 'heap' or an aggregation of phenomena or eventsof the, as it were, 'material' order. Bhante clarifies this withthe analogy of labelling bags of rice, maize, millet etc. Thelabels do 'not stand for so many entities of the cereal order butsimply for the various heaps, each one of which is composed ofmillions of tiny grains.' 13 Inasmuch as the Elements aredifferent heaps of events within the heap of rupa, we aretherefore '... concerned not with a specified number ofcombinations between solid and discrete things, but with anuninterrupted succession of permutations of an only more or lessstable number of processes.' 14 The fact is that Rupa is very mysterious, and, at first

sight, not a little confusing! The nearest that Buddhism gets totalking of the 'matter' of the physicist is to say that matter isessentially an aspect of our experience and of our perceptualsituation. In fact, even 'the distinction between "mental" and"material" becomes irrelevant and it is a matter of taste tospeak of physical objects. In other words, although we shallcontinue to speak about matter and mind, we must bear in mindthat it is but a figure of speech as untrue as the statement thesun is rising or setting.' 15

2. The Great Elementary Qualities We experience rupa, the intractable and resistant content ofour perception through our senses in four primary ways. Rupa hasfour primary and fundamental qualities, or dimensions, or evenflavours. The traditional terms for these are either dhuta ormahabhuta. These are are variously translated as the GreatElementary Quality, Element, or even Great Ghost or Magician. Iprefer to use the original term mahabhuta because I can morereadily associate with it the mysterious, indefinable, magical,chimera-like nature of rupa, which has more of the nature of avery lively and unpredictable spirit than what is conveyed by theconcept of dead Newtonian 'matter'. We might even like to thinkof rupa as 'energy' manifesting in our experience in one of fourways. Rupa is like a mirage which constantly changes shape, andcan appear to manifest either in four distinct basic patterns, ormore frequently as a complex of all four. The mahabhutas are symbolised by the terms Earth (prthivi),Water (apas), Fire (tapas) and Air (vayu); these names, accordingto Guenther, 'are derived from the 'objects' which common-senseassumes ...' These mahabhutas of Earth, Water, Fire and Airshould not be equated exactly with the phenomena of earth, water,fire and air. The mahabhutas are not four different types ofatomic stuff, distinct one from another; the connotation of theEnglish word 'element' is not particularly helpful in thiscontext. These terms are to be taken as images which suggestsymbolic truths. The image of, say, Water stands both for thequalities to be experienced quite literally in the experience ofwater, and for what is suggested, by using such a term as Water,to be characteristic of a particular aspect of the experience ofrupa. We see a strong coincidence between the experience of themahabhuta Earth and the soil, pebbles and rocks and so forth.But the former finds much wider expression than simply inreferring to the latter. The mahabhuta Earth is the symbolic expression for all thatis solid and able to carry a load (dhrti). The mahabhuta Wateris all that is fluid and cohesive (samgraha). The mahabhuta Fireis all that is warm or has temperature (pakti). And themahabhuta Air is all that is light and moving, i.e. extensive &

vibrant (vyuhana). The mahabhutas' greatness (maha) is due to their being thebasis of all the secondary qualities of rupa; they are elementalin that they knit together the whole of that which appears toexist. The external world comes to us through or via theiragency. Everything that exists appears through some combinationof the mahabhutas; and yet apparently we learn of them only byinference from the 'physical objects' which emerge from theseprimary qualities. I want to reiterate my main point: it is easy to confusethese symbols Earth, Water, Fire and Air with the literal thingsthat these terms suggest. Hence we may think that our experienceof the water we drink and wash in and so forth is exclusivelythat of the mahabhuta Water, and only that. But, even such abasic experience as water can have all the mahabhutas involved init. For instance, we see that when 'water carries ships, it alsohas temperature and movement so that in it there is also earth,fire and air, besides its own property of cohesion.' 16 Inanother example of, say, drinking a cup of tea, we experiencesomething flowing, where there is cohesiveness, and there is alsotemperature and warmth as well as some sense of solidity. Inthis way, if we analyse almost every one of our experiences,there is a combination of most, if not all four, mahabhutaspresent. For instance, 'In rocks and other terrestrial objects wefind cohesion, temperature, extension ... In a flame we observecontinuance, compactness, movement, so that in it there is earth(solidity), water (cohesion), and air (movement). In wind we seethat it is able to carry things, has temperature, warm or cold,and possesses tangibility, so that in it there are present earth(ability to carry) water (continuity and tangibility) and fire(temperature).' 17 It's fascinating to dwell upon this analysis of even suchbasic experiences as of water, or fire, or air, and to see thatthey are not so straight-forward as we usually are accustomed tothinking. Take another example: we might assume that we onlyexperience a candle flame as containing the mahabhuta Fire. Butwe only feel warmth and temperature when we get sufficientlyclose to the flame. And yet we definitely see something. Whenwe are looking at the candle from a distance in a still room, theflame appears to be solid to the eye; it's as solid as the candlebeneath it - I cannot see through the flame. So am I looking atthe mahabhuta Fire or is what I am seeing more characteristic ofthe mahabhuta Earth, and, if the flame is moving and flickering,of the mahabhutas Air and Water? Well perhaps it doesn't really matter! We could get hung upon trying to define things as being this or that. Huge wranglesmight start. What's important is that we begin to look at our

experience afresh, with a greater openness to what might behappening. Surely this points to the mysteriously fluid natureof our experience: a constant stream of ever changing phenomena?Even something as apparently substantial as a tree, is actually,in terms of our experience of it, constantly changing because ofthe constantly changing terms of that which is involved in theexperience. Yes, there is an objective content to the perceptualsituation, but that objective content is changing as well most,if not all, of the time.

3. The Great Magicians In the Six Element practice we try to get a sense of thisfluidity, and changing ebb and flow between the differentmahabhutas. 'What is the true nature of rupa? of the mahabhutaFire? of Air? of Water? of Earth? When I start to think of thesestones on the ground as being made of light, then my conventionalassumptions and frame-work, by which I organise my world, findsitself being rejigged. When I see a tree swaying in the breeze,just what I am seeing? There are some fascinating conundrums,koans, paradoxes. The mysterious, even magical and illusory-like nature ofexperience was often alluded to in Buddhist texts as being like amagician's show. There is of course that famous verse from theDiamond Sutra. 'As stars, a fault of vision, as a lamp, a mockshow, dew drops, or a bubble, A dream, a lightning flash, orcloud, So should one view what is conditioned.' The magicalnature of the mahabhutas is stressed, they are seen as the GreatMagicians spinning the illusion of maya. 'Just as a magician shows water which is not a gem as a gem,or clay which is not gold as gold, or himself not being an ogreor a bird, makes himself appear as an ogre or a bird, so also thefour great elementary qualities, themselves not being either blueor yellow, or red or white show themselves as the secondaryqualities blue, yellow or red, and white. Thus because of theirresemblance to the great feats of magicians they are termedmahabhutas. Just as such great beings as Yaksinis hide theirfearful nature by graceful deportment, by fair complexion andshape, and deceive sentient beings, so also these greatelementary qualities hide their true characteristics of hardnessand other properties; in their appearance as woman and men, bylovely complexion, by graceful shapes of limbs, by seductivemovements of hands and feet, finger and eyebrows, they deceivesimple people and do not allow them to see their real nature.Therefore, because of their resemblance to such great beings asYaksinis, due to their deceptiveness they are termed "greatelementary qualities."' 18 From this description, we get a sense of something moregoing on than meets the eye. Somehow I'm reminded of the three

witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth. Like black spiders at thecentre of an intricate web they spin the story of Macbeth'sdestruction; he's like a puppet dancing to their whim. To setthe scene, the play opens with these three old hags sitting on aheath, in the middle of a nasty storm: 'Where shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning orin rain? When the hurley-burly's done, When the battle's lost andwon. ... Fair is foul, and foul is fair. Hover through the fogand filthy air.' And then, Macbeth and Macduff bump into thesethree, and they make a pronouncement about Macbeth's andMacduff's future, and this is what Macduff says, '... thingsthat do sound so fair In the name of truth are ye fantastical orthat indeed which outwardly ye show?' These particular yaksinisdon't look so attractive; in fact, they're revolting. But whatthey speak about is very attractive! Macduff can't quite make outwhat is going on. Later on Hecate, one of the witches, who has really gotMacbeth in her grip by this stage, says, '... upon the corner ofthe moon there hangs a vap'rous drop profound; I'll catch it ereit come to ground; And that, distilled by magic sleights Shallraise such artificial sprites as, by the strength of theirillusion, shall draw on to his confusion.' 19 So Hecate is in thegame to wrap Macbeth up, and get him completely stuck. So shetells him that he can only be killed 'if Burnham wood come untoDunsinane' and that he cannot be killed by 'one of woman born'. Unfortunately Burnham wood does come unto Dunsinane, andMacbeth finds himself fighting on the battle-field for his life:he bumps into Macduff. By this time Macduff has a great deal tosettle up with Macbeth because Macbeth has killed Macduff's wifeand children. Macduff isn't in any mood to hang about; he wantsMacbeth's blood. So they fight, and as they pause for a momentMacbeth says, 'Thou losest labour. As easy mayst thou theintrenchant air With they keen sword impress as make me bleed.He's still puffed up with the pride prompted by Hecate'spromises. He's completely taken in the story she has spun him.'Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests; I bear a charmed life,which must not yield to one of woman born.' But Macduff isn't put off for a second. He comes straightback, 'Despair thy charm: And let the angel whom thou still hastserved Tell thee Macduff was from his mother's womb Untimelyripp'd.' This completely floors Macbeth. This is his death knell.At long last he realises that he has been duped, that he's beencompletely taken in by these witches' promises. He replies,'Accursed be that tongue that tells me so, For it hath cow'd mybetter part of man; And be these juggling fiends no more believedThat palter with us in a double sense, That keep the word ofpromise to our ear, And break it with our hope!' 20

Are these witches for real, or, are they the ambitions ofMacbeth's heart? Who knows! I find this story very interestingbecause it seems to reflect something of the story that themahabhutas are spinning for us all the time; we get taken in andentranced by it. We get taken along with it all. We make up ourstories out of our sense experiences in a way that leads us oninto all sorts of escapades and ambitions based around me andself. But, of course, because life isn't actually fundamentallystructured, patterned and built up in the way we would like it tobe, and because we have in a sense duped ourselves with theallegiance of these Great Magicians, we come to untimely ends. In one of Bhante's seminars, he says in speaking of themahabhutas as magical appearances and Great Spirits, that the'universe' is not dead or inert, as Blake criticised Newton forlulling Man asleep into thinking. Blake's greatest criticism ofNewton was that Newton's advances in scientific thought lull usto sleep; we are no longer in touch with the magical nature oflife. Nevertheless, as Bhante goes on to say, we cannot actuallyjunk our scientific conditioning; it has to be accommodated. (Wecould interpret the analogy of being asleep slightly differently:from the Enlightened point of view we encounter sprites andmagical magicians in our sleep and we happily live entranced in adream of illusions.) The key question: is how do we rediscover the mystery,wonder and magic that is there even in the most everyday ofexperiences? We will have to work against our tendency towards aself-referential and utilitarian approach. Bhante makes thispoint in a story where he is admiring a magnificently beautifuland mature pine tree somewhere near Kalimpong. As he was doingso a Nepalese friend arrived and commented that the tree wasindeed wonderful because it represented many months worth of fire-wood. His friend saw the tree simply from one perspective andconsequently that was all that it was and could be for him.

4. The Magicians' footprints According to the Abhidharma there are primary and secondary(upadayarupa) qualities of the objective content of ourperceptual experience. The primary qualities are the mahabhutas. Clearly we apprehend the mahabhutas through senseexperience. But to complicate the picture, not all Abhidharmistsbelieved we could directly experience the mahabhutas: for them,we infer the mahabhutas' existence from secondary qualities; wenever actually encounter them face-to-face, as it were; all wesee of the Magicians is the puff of smoke and the edge of theircloaks. But other abhidharmists disagreed: they believed that wedo experience the mahabhutas of solidity, temperature and motiondirectly but only through the organ of touch. In other words, we'feel' them directly, as we say.

All our other sense experiences are of one or another aspectof the mahabhutas in an indirect 'secondary form'. For example,I directly encounter the mahabhuta Earth when I squeeze thisrock. When I see 'it', I infer its existence. But when I touchit, then I encounter it directly. Whether this distinction isreally that useful, I'm not that sure; I'll leave you to work outfrom your own experience what you think. Here is an example of what I take is meant. If we areinside our hut, we can hear the wind in the trees outside: fromthis indirect secondary sense experience we infer the mahabhutaAir. But if we then go outside and feel it, the wind, on ourskin, we feel impact of the mahabhuta directly. At the same timeof course, we may see the trees waving and bending over fromwhich we also infer the indirect presence of the mahabhuta Air. What I find interesting is to reflect on how, for instance,I know something is solid. Obviously if I feel it, that isstraight-forward. But what if I am not in skin contact with it?Not everything I see which is opaque i.e. which appears solid issolid on further inspection. For example the light on the watersurface of a mountain lake reflects a picture of the mountainsabove so solid that they look as real as the actual mountains.We only see the difference when we get up close to the water. Or take another example, the other way around: the way lightis reflected off the brass candles sticks appears to suggest thesurface of a liquid, and since the only content of my perceptionsis sight at that point, am I experiencing the mahabhuta Water orEarth? If it is the mahabhuta Water, when I then touch the candle-sticks and experience solidity, has the Water mahabhuta changedinto the Earth mahabhuta? And then again, can I taste themahabhuta Earth, or smell it - I can't think of any obviousexamples, maybe you can? But I can hear it as when it resonatesand vibrates. So far I haven't been able to disentangle these sorts ofreflections to the point of working out whether they're actuallyuseful or not. So again I'll leave you to follow that up. Here,I'm simply trying to stimulate your thinking.

The secondary qualities and their sub-categories The secondary qualities are sights (primarily in terms oflight), sounds, smells, tastes, and tangibles (feelings). Thelast category is difficult to get a sense of because in Englishthere is so much which is subsumed under the heading of feeling.But even a feeling as refined as metta is felt quite tangibly asa physical sensation inside us. Our processes of categorising and hence describing andinterpreting our experience to ourselves goes further than justsaying I see, hear, taste, feel etc. We subdivide each of thesecategories into sub-categories, and even subdivide these. So,

for example in the Abhidharma, the content of what we see issubdivided into categories of colour and shape, each of which canbe further subdivided, e.g. primary and secondary colours. The Abhidharmas of various different schools of have donethis in their different ways, perhaps not as extensively as onemight think, and yet, at the same time, there are some quitestrange categories included, which I'm not going to enumerate.And, there was quite a lot of disagreement over what should gowhere. I don't intend to elaborate any further, because I'm notsure that it really helps to pursue the traditional categories -maybe one of our more scholastically inclined Order members willunearth some deeper usefulness in these categories. But thebasic principle is nevertheless clear: if we want to apprehendthe mahabhutas, we need to develop our capacities to describe allour different sense experiences.

4. SUMMARY Here I want to round up our discussion of Rupa. It seems tome that we need to go in two different directions at once:

i) Educate yourself First of all we need to acknowledge that we inevitablycategorise, structure and interpret our perceptual experience;that is the way we are built. We must consciously master theseprocesses rather than remaining unconsciously passive to them.In doing so, we will learn how to move freely from one system ofinterpretation to another as is appropriate. We need to learn how to make increasingly fine and subtledistinctions within our sense experience. This will be greatlyaided by increasing our vocabulary in relation to each of thesenses. For instance, we cannot really appreciate the visualfield if our range of description of colour is a mere five or sixwords. There is the hoary example of the Eskimo's ten differentkinds of snow. The Eskimos learnt to make those distinctionsbecause it is important to them. Or, for instance, we often havea very poor ability to describe what we actually feel. We needto extend our vocabulary, and become more adept at making finerdistinctions between different feelings. So often I find myselfopening and shutting my mouth, and then coming out with thathorrible word 'nice'. It's all I can think of! And we need tolearn how to look; so often we just don't know how to look. Sohow do we do this? We can learn how to look by paying attention.Learning how to draw, to paint, or do ikebana, or any of thedifferent fine arts will teach us how to see what there is to beseen in the visual and tactile field. And we need to learn howto listen. Perhaps through learning to listen to music, ormaking music, or learning how to sing, or perhaps learningdifferent birds' calls. It is interesting that the Abhidharma

includes communication under the heading of sound. So there maywell be a sense in which we can learn to listen more acutelythrough the practice of communication skills. And so on: we needto learn how to smell and taste. And lastly, while this may not be strictly the case inrelation to the five senses, learning how to think clearly isessential to the perceptual process. We should master such basicskills as how to use a dictionary, how to use definitionseffectively, and how to categorise; we can learn more about thecategorising process itself and what the principles are thatinform it, so that it is not unconscious but something we knowthat we are doing. We can learn to think clearly throughlearning how to write, how to communicate and how to converse,and through learning a new language. These are all quite simple, but also strong and effectiveways of increasing our range of perceptive ability. We need totake these practices quite seriously, not only for the reasonsalready mentioned, but also because this is what the Bodhisattvais said to need to do, to master all dharmas, and specifically inthe area of arts and crafts. It enables him to see more clearlywhat he's involved with and to help other people more effectivelyas a consequence. Whilst we are sharpening up our sensitivity via one oranother of these disciplines we should remember to apply what welearn to distinguishing the mahabhutas more acutely. In otherwords we should remain conscious of our purpose which is to comeinto more direct and immediate contact with the basic and primaryElements of experience. So far the discussion has indicated an enriching of apicture of, so to speak, a horizontal field of experience. Andyet, if we explore our experience of the mahabhutas atincreasingly refined levels, we will begin to enter the rupaloka,the realm of archetypal form. To perceive the subtler and morerefined depths of the objective content of our perception, wehave to rise to a subtler more refined level of consciousness. Through the agency of this very important preparatory workwe refine our awareness so that we can study awareness itself,and make our awareness the object of its own perceptions. Thisis where the Six Element practice is leading us: to study the socalled 'subjective' pole of our experience. We start off withrupa because it is objective, solid and something 'we can get ourhands on'. As we work our way through the practice we go to everincreasingly refined and subtler levels or dimensions ofexperience, until eventually we work directly with awarenessitself, which is very mercurial and intangible. To summarise this first direction in which we must go: wemust educate ourselves. We must educate ourselves in a varietyof different systems of interpreting and categorising as an aid

to refining our attention and awareness. It struck me thatManjughosa is a good symbol for this; he is the Bodhisattva ofthe arts and speech, he holds the Sword of Wisdom, that iscapable of making very fine and subtle distinctions.

2. Look beyond the rational The second direction we should go in, which really grows outof the first, is to learn to avoid falling into the trap ofthinking our categories and labels are real. Our categories areonly like fingers pointing to the moon. They direct us to atruer awareness of incessant flux of experience which weconstantly structure through our perceptual processes. To becomethe masters of our interpretative process, we must break free ofbeing its victims, passive and hoodwinked by it. Instead we mustdevelop the freedom to choose how we interpret. Remember that, however good our definitions are, howevereffective our categorising is, inevitably experience is 'too big'to be described completely accurately. Not only can ourcategories lead to contradictions, they can only be provisional.Being provisional our categories cannot do full justice to ouractual experience. This is just fine. This is not to say thatdefining is not actually essential to clear thinking. Of courseit is. But eventually we have to realise that there there issomething 'more' that cannot fit the interpretative andcategorising process. If we are open to this, we won't befrightened of contradictions. We won't be frightened ofparadoxes and illogicalities. In fact we'll enjoy the fact thatour logical processes are not adequate. For instance thedifficulty of marrying the Hinayana and Mahayana versions of thePath will be amusing, rather a cause for getting uptight andengaging in Procrustean tactics to make everything fit together.If we cut two identical cakes up in two different ways, the partsof each cake cannot match the parts of the other cake. It'ssilly to try to make them do so.

If we go in both these different directions, we'll set upthe conditions to learn how to let go of our possessiveness to,our grasping after, our craving for, and our intoxication withmaterial experiences which reinforce our false sense of self,e.g. hot cocoa, second helpings, my space etc. Moreimportantly, we'll also learn how to let go of ourpossessiveness, our attachment in relation to how we'reinterpreting, categorising, making sense of experience toourselves, i.e. we'll let go of our possessiveness in thinkingin terms of 'my way of making sense of things is the right, theonly way', of insisting that things are exclusively this or that.It is surprising how often in study groups how people areattached to 'their' point; they've invested a lot in a particular

way of looking at something, and, because it isn't expressed thesame way as another's, this discrepancy becomes a source ofdisharmony. The funny thing is that a third party can see thateveryone is really saying the same thing! Like two rutting deer,they have an urge to prove their point of view. We must rememberthat life is always too big for us to categorise it, to put intonice little boxes, too big to label neatly and accurately. Thereis something much much bigger out there which cannot be boxed up.It's vital to stay in touch with this wider dimension. If we do all of this we will learn to let our perceptualexperiences reveal something 'more', 'beyond' immediatecategories of interpretation, something of the deeper poetic,'darker' mystery of life: something Bhante as a poet, despitebeing a master of analysis, seems really adept in doing. Incontemplating a very ordinary experience, that of a candle flame,he sees something more, something which speaks of the deepesttruths.Twisting, writhing, leaping,Low curtseying, ne'er the same,Burns in its silver cresset,Blue-eyed, a tawny flame.

Life from the air receiving,Light to the world it gives;No winds its pride extinguish:Because it yields it lives.

Yet drop by drop, in darkness,Consumeth that whereonIts bright fantastic beautyMust feed, or else begone.

For whether fire or water,Earth, air, or flower or stone,The seen lives from the Unseen,The known on the Unknown.

And man, within whose bosomLurks the subtlest flame of all,Must feed on The UndyingOr flicker, fade and fall -

Must feed on The Undying,On that which has no name,But which the Dark Sage calleth'An Ever-Living Flame'.21 ç

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

1. Introduction Subhuti, in his own talk said that we can easily waxmetaphysical on the subject of space, but he strongly advised hisaudience not to do so. Following his advice I intend this talkto be very down to earth. Subhuti went on to advise us to startoff in the Six Element practice by 'experiencing' space in themost immediate, straight-forward, common-sense way we can. Mydiscussion follows the general outline of his talk, althoughelaborating on some points quite considerably. After taking thisrather more down-to-earth approach today, tomorrow I want tostretch our horizons somewhat by introducing the Buddhist notionof akasha.

2. Characteristic ways of experiencing space We experience space in a variety of different ways. I'mgoing to introduce five of the principal ones.

i. as 'that-which-is-between-things' Firstly, we experience space as 'that-which-is-between-things', as an 'openness', or as a 'potentiality forunimpededness'. Take, for instance, the gap between me and you,my audience: there's nothing between us, I'm free to move rightup to you - there is an emptiness within which we can move

without anticipation of resistance to movement. It'sparticularly apparent in the experience of standing on top of alarge mountain - like some of the ones around here. You can seefor miles and miles around, with the big open skies, and you cansee the sea stretching away maybe thirty, forty, even fifty milesaway one way, and then miles and miles of open mountain-tops,valleys and open moorland stretching off in the other directions.We get a tremendous feeling of expanse just going out, on and onand on, all around us. And then compare that experience withbeing squeezed into a Mini with say five, or six, or seven, oreight other people. There is an immediate difference: one isopenness, freedom, expansiveness, and the other is confinement,not being able to move, and everything is hurting because you'resquashed and pushed up against something else. The experience of space is that open gap of distance whichis between what you experience as yourself, generally your body,and those objects which are experienced outside you. So this isvery commonplace; I'm just trying to articulate what it is like.

2. as 'that which contains' Secondly, space is experienced as that within which things,including at times ourselves, are contained. This is oftenassociated with a sense of containment, bounded-ness, andtherefore a boundary, or boundaries. An obvious example: a boxis a space. We look inside the box, and we perceive a space,which has got some definite boundaries. Some boxes are biggerthan others; some bound bigger spaces than others; there arebigger and smaller spaces. Similarly a room gives us a veryimmediate perception of space in this sense: different rooms giveus an immediate impression of the space they contain. And ofcourse there is an outside to the room or the box, so there is aspace within which the room and the box is contained. When we speak of space in the more universal sense, it issomething outside which we cannot go. We could go on going andnever get to the end of it! Because we can go on and on, andnever get to the end of it, space is quite different fromanything else we experience. So it is a quality of experiencewhich is potentially infinite. We can travel in any direction within space, but actuallynever at any point be absolutely any further East, West, North orSouth than when we started to move! Movement in space isexperienced as being in relation to something else. This can getquite complicated. Because if that something else is alsomoving, then our sense of direction, is still only in relation tothat other moving object. I know very little about navigation,but I would imagine one has to take these sorts of things intoaccount.

iii. as 'that which gets filled' Thirdly, we necessarily take up, or use a certain amount ofspace; we 'fill' up space. We may even have quite a strong senseof ourselves being a certain size and shape, and therefore takingup, or even needing a particular 'me-sized and me-shaped space'.Our sense of space is strongly conditioned by how we experience'our' use of space. For example, when a particularly largefriend of mine comes to Padmaloka he needs two beds! There isactually a fair bit of variation in the human size and shape.What we might be accustomed to thinking of as the norm probablyisn't the norm at all. If we are 6'6" and 15 stone, and ratherrotund to boot, we would have a rather different feeling of ourspace than if we're 5'4", only 8 stone, rather thin and delicate. Inevitably we make a shape with our bodies, which we may ormay not like. And our feelings in this respect will saysomething about how we feel about using up space. For example, Ihave another close friend who is at least 6'6" and probably 15stone or more. But I get the impression that he's trying topretend that he's considerably smaller; he has the most amazinglyhunched shoulders and stoop. And he seems to be apologising forbeing so big; he appears to not really want to be noticed.Actually he's a real shocker when he does actually pull himselfup to his full height, and opens up his shoulders: good grief!What a mountain of a man! But it's very difficult to get him tostand up like that. It may be that he's actually very shy andlacks the confidence of his own stature. Generally speaking, how we move around through space can sayquite a lot about 'where we're coming from', to use that phrase.We probably don't think about how we're moving around; what we dojust feels normal. But, of course, we all know that people domove about very differently; in other words, they move throughspace very differently. For example, some people stump around,leaning forward, and then others are very slow, and 'laid back',and almost seem to glide around. There are all sorts ofpossibilities. Anyway, along with an awareness of our body as having aparticular shape and size is an ongoing sense of where wephysically stop and start, and indeed where the world starts andstops. And more than that: we have an emotional and psychicsense of where we and others stop and start, which may or may notcoincide with where we and others physically stop and start.Quite often people stop way beyond where their body does! Somepeople seem to take up a lot of space; these 'big', exuberantpersonalities contrast with those who are trying to pretend thatthey're not actually there, who may be even apologising forfilling up even the physical space they occupy! So in a deepersense 'my space', as the contemporary idiom has it, is not justlimited to our physical boundary, to how far we physically

extend, it is also how far we psychically extend and 'bodyforth'. This feeling of extension is apparently integral to ourexperience of space. The notion of extension and bodying forth is demonstrated inthe teaching of the five sheaths (kosha) of human consciousness,which Govinda introduces in Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism 22 .What he outlines is: i) the densest sheath which is built upthrough nutrition i.e. the physical body (anna-maya-kosa). And,ii) the 'ethereal body', a subtle, fine material sheath (prana-maya-kosa), consisting of prana, sustained and nourished bybreath. This might correspond with what is known as the astralbody, which apparently we are automatically born with as a subtlecounterpart to the physical body. In one of Bhante's discussionsof this, he points out that we don't actually stop where wenormally see the body as stopping. If we were to take a certainkind of electronic photograph we just see a cloud of particlessurrounding the body, without any distinct boundaries, and itwould be very difficult to decide where we stopped. The astralbody is a bit like this: a low level 'physical aura' of chargedparticles surrounding body, which has no distinct boundary. And,iii) the thought body (mano-maya-kosa), a personality formedthrough active thought. I get the impression that this sheathhas to be made. It is, in a sense, something we create,particularly through karmic action, and spiritual activity. Anintensity of spiritual practice would seem to build up a certainpresence, which can be definitely 'picked up on'. Clearly thisis associated with the physical body, but is somehow is much morethan it. For example, when we see someone 'glowing' after apuja, or meditation, perhaps this is what we're experiencing? Andthen, iv) the body of potential consciousness (vijnana-maya-kosa), which is the totality of spiritual capacities. This isreally beyond my understanding. It may have some connection withmind-made body that comes from developing the mundane siddhis ofthe fourth dhyana. This radiant, luminous 'mental' body is thatby which some Bodhisattvas are said to carry out their work forthe emancipation of all sentient beings. And then finally, v)the highest sheath is the body of universal consciousness (ananda-maya-kosa) or, the body of bliss, or, the body of inspiration.Apparently this is equivalent to the sambhogakaya. What Govindais keen to point out is that these bodies are not distinct; theymutually interpenetrate. They are mutually interpenetratingforms of energy from the finest all-radiating to the densest formof materialised consciousness. Why I am mentioning all this isbecause I want to point out that not only do we have this senseof taking up space, but also there are degrees of subtlety to it,which go beyond literal physical displacement of, say, the waterin our baths.

iv. as 'relational' Fourthly, our sense of space is relational, in two respects.Firstly, we experience space by dint of our immediate physicalrelationship within space to other objects around us. I'vetouched on this already: we have a sense of where we are locatedin relationship to the world around us, by virtue of beingrelated to other things. For instance, I'm here, you're there ina chair, there's a table next to you, and so there is a set ofspatial coordinates. We build up a sense of space in relation tothese 'things' around us. And then secondly, our sense of space is relational in termsof how we relate to things we regard as ours, and definitely notours, and of those things which are, as it were, public property.We build up a sense of space and freedom to move around, and use,that space according to how we relate to the objects that fillthat space. For instance, it's amazing how rapidly we can lay claim to aspace. I was thinking of how airline seats become very rapidlyappropriated - people get very attached to a seat, even it isn'tthe seat they should be in! We define ourselves very quickly inrelation to others through laying claim to a particular space.Another example is how we like to 'jostle' to get comfortable inthe cinema - we need to be in the right relation to the screenand all those around us. We get it just right, and then in comessomeone late, and plonks himself right in front of us, or rightbeside us. It's infuriating! More particularly, we get a very strong sense of our ownspace in relation to our possessions. For example, we think of'my room', 'my house', 'my car', 'my bed', 'my office', 'mychair', 'my desk', 'my computer', 'my knickknacks', 'my photos'.Some of these examples are much more obviously conventionalspaces than others; others are more things that 'fill' up spaceemotionally speaking, making it 'ours'. In their different ways,we define space through them. For example, you must already identify with particularspaces here at Guhyaloka: your hut, your part of your hut, yourwash stand, your place in the shrine room, the place where youtend to sit perhaps at the dining table, your favourites spotswhere you can be on your own, places where you like to walk to.Our whole pattern of life and routine is built around using thesespaces and what they contain as we wish. If somebody else startsto use these spaces, we can very easily get upset. Some of these examples are more metaphorical, and othersmore literally open spaces, within which we can organise,arrange, structure, and pattern our possessions in the way wefeel we want. We may even like this or that possession becauseof the way it takes up space in a peculiar and characteristicway, and offsets itself against other things which take up space

in their own characteristic ways. The combination of a number ofthese is often aesthetically pleasing to us. I have anotherfriend, a graphic designer, who spends his time fascinated withsetting up the relationships of typeface and images on pieces ofpaper. He feels really happy, when he's got it 'right'. In asimilar kind of way we seem to do this with the spaces that welive in; we set things up so that we feel right there: it'saesthetically pleasing - whether it's aesthetically pleasing toothers is quite another matter! Part of the joy and comfort of'our space' is that we're completely free to do what we want;often, this means not even having to take others intoconsideration, or only rather marginally. Our will and desirehas full reign; it's the focal point around which everything isarranged. This is enormously gratifying; we're right at thecentre of it all, the world revolves around us. This sense of expansiveness and freedom is even more thecase in relation to those 'possessions' which afford usopportunities of extension and movement. For example, a car canmake an enormous difference to our sense of space and our senseof freedom. I remember the very great difference owning amotorbike made in London; the city was so much more accessible.Travelling on the Tube is so much more narrow, confined, eventortuous, antagonistic, confrontational and competitive to use.A motorbike gave me so more 'freedom of choice'; I could choosewhen, how, where I wanted to go. Strangely enough, I think money is a particularly goodexample of space. Money is obviously not strictly speaking spacein the Newtonian sense, but it affords to us space, in a moremetaphorical sense. If we have money, we are free, in a sense,to do what we want - obviously within a rather particular sphereof concern. We can go places, buy things, do this, do that etc.I think this is one of the reasons that we get so attached tomoney, and identify with it so strongly. Money gives us thepossibility of extension and movement into the wider world. Ifwe don't have money, if we don't have two beans to rub together,well, in a sense, we're stuck and confined by that lack. OK, Iknow that there is a lot more to life than what money can buy.

v. as 'an infinite number of perspectives' As I said earlier, our experience of space is relational.It is relational in the sense that we experience an immediatephysical relationship to other objects around us: we have a senseof where we are located in relation to the world around us byvirtue to our relationship to specific objects. In this way, wecome to occupy a point in space by which we orientate ourselvesto other objects in space. Hence, we experience space from aparticular view-point. So this is the fifth point I want to make: wherever we are,

we experience space from that position, not from any other; spaceis the infinite number of different viewing points. Forinstance, I'm over here, and you're over there. They're actuallyvery different experiences. And what is so easy to forget isthat what we are experiencing is just one of an infinite numberof possible ways of experiencing space, and what is containedwithin it. For example, sitting at one end of the shrine roomrather than the other does make a big difference to how weexperience being in the shrine room. We tend to see ourexperience as 'the' way of seeing things, rather than just oneout of a very large number. And so we interpret and make senseof our experience from 'our' point of view. Subhuti used theexample of the mountain Puig Campana, which is such a prominentpart of the landscape of Guhyaloka. Campana means bell. FromFinestrat, a small town on the other side of the mountain, thisname makes perfect sense; but, from over here it certainlydoesn't look like a bell, but rather more like a camel! We can soeasily forget that there are very different experiences of thesame mountain; there is literally another point of view, onewhich we never can have from here. We have to learn to consciously bear in mind that there areother points of view, sometimes radically different ones to ours,and equally valid to our own. And sometimes some points of vieware better, or truer, or afford a better view, so to speak, thanothers; and then again, sometimes not. In reality, life, evenour own life, is not organised around a focal point. But oursense of there being a point in space from which we see lifeencourages us to think of 'our' life, and life in general ashaving a central focus to it. But it's not like that really;it's much more open that that; there are so many morepossibilities of looking at things, either literally, or moremetaphorically and psychologically speaking.

3. Getting attached to space In many of these examples we tend to identify our experienceof space as ours. We attach a label to it: it's 'mine'. Inbeing free to use these spaces, or the things contained withinthese spaces, as we wish, depending on the degree of flexibilitythey afford, we have a sense of possession, control and ownershipof the space. And as I said earlier, we can lay claim to what weregard as 'our space' really very quickly indeed. Of course, inthe literal sense, where we are, others cannot be; where ourthings are, others possessions can't be. Even something likethis chair, for instance, is 'my' chair; 'I'm sitting in it -sorry, that's mine, that's where I am.' Therefore nobody else canbe there! This feeling of ownership comes out much strongly in somesituations than others. For example, the English are renowned

for queuing; queuing at a bus-stop, we have a strong sense 'our'place in the queue: I'm here, and there are some people in frontof me, and other people very definitely behind me. And thosebehind me better stay where they are, because I'm not going toput up with any queue-barging! But when the English go to India,they have a real shock; the Indians don't seem to relate to spacein that sort of way at all! And we can experience this sense ofownership of space when we go into a stranger's house. Our senseof space can contract quite markedly, pretty much on occasion tothat which our bodies are taking up. Everything else is theirs;we try not to infringe too much on their space. So the strengththe feeling of 'our' space can come and go very considerably. We identify much more strongly with 'our' space, as anextension of ourselves, and its boundaries defining us, when wefeel completely free to do and be what we want to be within thatspace: when we are the boss. In those spaces where we are freeto order things and to arrange everything around us, then we feelwe own that space. Our room is a very good example; we'd beoutraged if someone came in and started moving things around.Although it is interesting that it is said to be one of the marksof good friendship, that we feel happy if that is what ourfriends feel free to do. This possession, ownership and control of the freedom andscope to be free is highly prized. It's deeply instinctual,coming perhaps out of territorial imperative, which is presumablydeeply imbued within us by virtue of biological conditioning. Wecertainly compete for this space, and we institutionalise ourownership of it, and we go to considerable lengths to define itlegally. We've got a very stark reminder of this just yards awayfrom us: our neighbour has bulldozed the scrub on the perimeterof our land with theirs, explicitly to remind us of where we stopand they start. In a variety of ways we go to considerablelengths to define 'our' spaces, parcelling them up, even puttingfences around them, often literally; the English seemparticularly fond of doing this. At times this seemsridiculously absurd; if we fly over English countryside, we seeall these tiny little patches of grass outside people's houses.And we will go to considerable lengths to protect what we regardas our space, to protect our 'rights'. Apparently it's evenworse in the States: you can get peppered, shot up, or have dogsput on you if you 'trespass' onto another's space; it seemspeople feel they have every right to do this. Ownership of space is clearly closely related to otherpeople! We can feel crowded out, invaded, even violated, andabused by others coming into our space. For instance, peopleoften experience burglary very keenly on just this account; it'snot so much what they've lost, maybe they haven't lost much atall in terms of possessions, but it is the fact that someone has

forcibly intruded upon their space - this can be traumatic. There are some people we don't just like being close; wefeel tense and awkward around them. But there are other peoplewho we don't really mind being right next to, or even touchingus, although we may not know them well or not at all. And then,of course, there are those very special people who we want asclose to us as possible, wrapped up in our space with us. Whenyou stop to think about it, all this is rather odd: especiallywhen we can feel perfectly happy in a crowded shopping mallamongst hundreds of people, and then we can get really touchyabout someone walking past on the pavement outside our frontdoor. The way we identify ourselves with different types of spacedescribes our conditioned nature; as a habit it is useful becauseit roots and grounds us in the situation. It gets unhealthy tothe extent we get attached and cling. It's so easy to thinkwe're not attached; but what if I said we're going to changearound huts after the public ordinations? Or everybody had tochange places in the shrine room this evening? It might bealright if you thought you were going to get a better deal! Butunless you were pretty sure that was going to be the case, wellit just wouldn't be on: you are quite happy where you are; you'vegot used to it. Well, that's OK; but, it does show how somethingthat we take very much for granted is actually something to whichwe are very attached. For instance, when you leave this retreat,you'll go back and find that the situation has moved on, peoplewill have changed things, particularly if you are living in alarge community. They've gone on with life without you; theywon't have forgotten you, but all the familiar spaces which youwere used to using have probably being taken and used by somebodyelse. So when you get back, you'll in a sense have to reclaimyour space, but it may not be the old familiar ones that will befree! This experience of attachment to space really hits usapparently when we die. At least initially we cannot reallyaccept that we have died. There is an attachment to being'here'. And apparently one of the really distressing things isseeing people using our spaces without any apparent regard to uswhatsoever! And then, they start selling off our possessions!"Hoi! what you doing with my bed!" They just don't take anynotice of us any more. So gradually everything by which we areaccustomed to orientating our self gets dispersed and scatteredin the four directions. Apparently, this is really verydisorientating, and not a little upsetting.

4. Our metaphorical uses of the term 'space' Much of what I have so far talked about in terms of ourexperience of space has already touched upon or can easily be

extended into our psychological-cum-emotional experience ofourselves; it also refers in a metaphorical sense to the patternof our lives working itself out in a particular field, or sphere,or arena, world, or domain. So I want to explore this a littlerfurther; my comments here are inevitably rather general incharacter, but nevertheless will I hope stimulate some productivereflection. The word space is often used metaphorically to say somethingabout how we are feeling, and how we relate psychologically toour situation. We use phrases like 'my space', 'I need space -to be myself', 'I'm feeling spaced out' to convey something aboutour state of minds. In this way, the term space can come to saysomething about our sense of ourselves and about us as developingindividuals. In the same way that our sense of physical space isrelational, i.e. is determined by objects one in relation toanother, many of these psychological feelings are relational,often with regard to other people. Other people seem to be thekey factors in determining how much space we feel we have - andthis at times can have very little to do with how physicallyclose or distant we are to them - they almost literally take upspace in our minds. In a similar way that we use the metaphor of a mandala,which is a graphic and spatial depiction of what is of meaningand significance to us, we highlight what is central to our liveswhen we talk about the way in which we "need to create space inour lives for 'this' or 'that'". And when we talk in terms ofpriorities, and of what is most important to us, there is animplicit spatial reference as what is closer or further away towhat is most central to us. Do you see the point I'm making? Wehave, so to speak, a model in the back of our minds: a spatialmodel, of our lives, of who we are, of what we're about, of whatwe're trying to do with ourselves.

i. Boundaries And in a similar way, through our use of language, weindicate the nature of our boundaries i.e. how far we extend,and the manner in which we do so. We say something about wherewe stop and start as an individual in relation to others, as apersonality in terms of our interests, perceived needs and wants,our capabilities and talents. Our sense of individuality seemsto be bound up with a sense of our space, whether we have spaceto be ourselves, whether we feel free to be ourselves, to becreative, to play or act out what are our deeper urges, instinctsand impulses. The notion of our boundaries is interesting because the waywe conceive of ourselves in this respect says something about howflexible we are in responding to external influences, and how

much we may invest in terms of time, energy, and money even, inpreserving what we regard as 'our space', or, to use anotherterm, 'our sphere of concern'. For example, we may have twelvefoot high walls with barbed wire and broken glass surfacessurrounding us, and, in effect, be very interned and self-absorbed because of the nature of this impenetrable boundary inrelation to external influences, particularly other people. Or,we may be so lacking in our depth of personal integrity that, ineffect, we have no boundaries, and what sense of boundary we dohave is defined by others' boundaries, and as a consequence weare open to every fashionable wind that blows. These are two, ofmany, hypothetical extremes; but sadly, sometimes we do comeacross actual examples!

ii. The boundaries of the healthy individual By contrast, a healthy individual seems to have theintegrity of personality to the point that his space, or sphereof activity and concern, is well-defined, with a characteristicintegrity and sense of appropriate containment specific to thatindividual. It's not as if there is one particular way in whichan individual has to be. If someone is acting as a genuineindividual, they have a characteristic integrity and appropriatecontainment about them; it's an identifiable flavour. Theindividual has definite boundaries, and yet at the same time, hisboundaries have a plasticity to them that allows for genuinelycompassionate and friendly interaction and engagement with thedemands and needs of the 'outside' world. In biological terms, ametaphor might be a semi-permeable membrane; there is a boundaryand there is traffic of a specific character which is allowed topass across it. Such an individual in knowing his strengths andcapabilities, in knowing the limits of his own resources, is ableto persevere, and even enhance the richness of 'his inner space',of himself and his particular 'world' through engaging with thatbeyond it. This is the middle way between the two extremes citedat the end of the last section. Such an individual's concerns,i.e. interests and desire to respond to the needs of others, meanhe goes out beyond himself; and in extending himself, hestretches and develops his capacities even further, and therebyenriches his own inner world. So there is an appropriaterelationship between inner and outer space. His sphere or the space of his concern is neither toograndiose, e.g. thinking that he is some sort of Christ-likegenius who is about to save the whole world, nor are his concernsso self-preoccupied and narrow that what he actually does isconsiderably smaller than his potential capacities and sphere ofinfluence. Some people get very excited about saving the world;but they do so in a way that loses sight of who they are, of

where they're 'at', of where they stop and start. They have gotinflated by something much bigger which is outside of themselves.The other kind of person almost implodes, getting so wrapped upin himself that he achieves very much less than he has thecapacity to do; he fails to get around to doing much at all,being so preoccupied with his own entrails. The best thing forsuch a person is to get out and give, because in that way herealises that there is much more to life than his own immediateconcerns or difficulties. The truly developing individual will be stretching himself,and hence growing through a continual series of small incrementalexpansions of his capacities into an ever expanding sphere ofconcern which is just effectively bigger than his immediatecapacities. He is always challenging himself to extend yetfurther; it's a process of continual expansion and self-transcendence. In this way, the growing individual continuallygoes forth from identifying himself with a particular sphere orspace of concerns, with a particular world of self-definingpatterns and boundaries, to discovering fresh and new ways ofmeeting his desire to include yet ever more within his sphere orspace of concerns. He goes for refuge to the process ofcontinually breaking out of his immediate sphere of concern tosomething bigger and better. The real individual is not a staticglobe; he is an expanding globe, shining ever more brightly withenergy. Since such a growing individual knows where he currentlystops and starts, consequently he knows where others stop andstart. He doesn't get confused as to what is him and what isother people. Emotionally he remains distinct: he doesn'tproject emotions and so forth on to others, and then mistake thatprojection for something other than it really is. In knowingwhere his real boundaries are, the individual has a much morerealistic understanding of what is within his sphere of controland influence and what isn't. He has a truer perspective on whohe is, what he can do, and where he is going. He has a truerperspective on who others are, what they can do, and where theyare going. Hence he has a much more realistic expectations ofwhat he can achieve, and what others can achieve. He doesn't rely on others to make him feel happy, confidentand safe. If he is a buddhist he relies on the Three Jewels, theBuddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha as effective refuges becausehe knows that only they can provide a true perspective, a meansof genuine growth, and meaningful human communication. And inexploring these refuges, somewhat paradoxically he comes to relyessentially on himself, because he knows fulfilment, happinessand confidence can only come from 'within'; he is not looking forit outside. Since he looks and sees what is really there in himself and

other people, the feelings he has, as a consequence of thisbroader awareness, are much more appropriate. He empathises, hemakes the imaginative leap and shares with others their joys andpains. Hence he is really able to be a friend - he can reallygive to others without any strings attached, without any hiddenagendas. These are some of the consequences of having a healthysense of space, sphere of influence, and concern.

iii. The individual and the infinite nature of space This notion of boundaries to our personality reminds me ofour fear of emptiness, of a blank nothingness, which seems to beoften at the root of our perception of space. It's as if thefragile walls of our personality are keeping at bay this vastocean of unlimited nothingness, extending on for ever and ever,both spatially and in time. It's not surprising with that kindof picture in our minds that we're frightened - but actuallythere is nothing to be frightened of. This pseudo-scientificnihilistic view of space is just an idea. It is true that thenature of space is awe-strikingly inconceivable. Space is afterall actually unbounded, undivided, impartite, completely open,unlimited, undifferentiated, not organised around any focalpoint(s), infinite, vast. In the end, space is indefinable;space is just space. At first sight, the infinite universal character of space isapparently the polar opposite to that of the individualstruggling to assert his independence and autonomy within hissphere of influence amidst the vast ocean of unpredictablepossibilities of life. It feels like we could just simply drown,get swamped out and swallowed up by the immensity of space andall that it contains. But Bhante has a much more positive visionof how the individual emerges out of this fear of the enormity ofspace to contain, in a sense, the entire universe, and certainlyto express it. He says, 'It is not as though their individuality has simply mergedinto something non-individual, or even supra-individual, so thatthey become rather featureless. They seem to be more'themselves' than ever before. There is a strange fusion ofindividuality and universality; they are more universal, but atthe same time more individual. ... paradoxically, it is theindividual that expresses that universal experience. If therewasn't limited form, what medium could there be for theexpression of the universal experience? ... the use of the term'universal' can be misleading, if it makes us think of somethingabstract and common. When the individual, to use that language,attains the universal, it is not as though the individual ismerged into something which is non-individual. From a spiritualpoint of view, universality is a particular way in which theindividual behaves. For instance, when the individual is

developing metta, ... it is an individual being universal. ...universality is an attitude that pertains essentially anddistinctively to the individual. ... universality is one of theways in which an individual functions, not a thing into which theindividual disappears. Any apparent contradiction between thenotion of individuality and the notion of the universal ariseswhen we make the universal something more abstract, and thenreify it.' 23This is what we practise in the metta bhavana - it is not so muchthat we literally explore space, but that, through a verydefinite expansion of our being beyond being immediately bound upwith our self-concern, we learn to cultivate a boundlessunlimited infinite love; our love is more universal, it knows nobarriers, neither of space nor time. So in this way we learn howto overcome identifying our experiences of space as limiting.Our contemplation of the Element Space in the Six Elementpractice is an extension of this basic practice.

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

Different cultural perspectivesi. Newtonian space Our English word 'Space' is used to translate the Buddhistterm 'akasha'. The Buddhist notion of akasha is radicallydifferent from that of 'Newtonian space' posited in Newton'sPrincipia Mathematica (1687). Speaking rather generally, Newtondefines space as the unlimited three-dimensional expanse withinwhich all material objects are contained; that expanse ischaracterised by absence of matter, and furthermore is amechanical, mathematical, and a geometric postulate. It is anabstracted formula necessary to Newton's explanations of naturalphenomena. Space was a theoretical notion, something that Newtonhad to come up with in relation to such things as gravitationalfields, and other scientifically observable phenomena. All of this would suggest that the nature of space isessentially inert or 'dead'. Given our normal mode of perceptionthis seems accurate enough; we think of space as an absence, anothingness between us and 'something out there'. This view ofour experience is from the Buddhist perspective stronglyconditioned by our being rooted in the kamaloka, the realm of thesenses.

ii. Influence of post-Renaissance camera reality Our everyday notion of space, strongly conditioned by ourcultural and scientific background, has from time to time beenradically affected by particular technological developments. Onesuch development evolved as the post-Renaissance camera reality,which Aloka discusses in his third talk in The Refuge Tree asMythic Context. Apparently the photograph (taken by the camera!) was thelogical technological conclusion to developments in what iscalled the theory of perspective, a way of looking at the worlddeveloped by the fine artists of the European XIV centuryRenaissance in relation to easel painting. This stronglyinfluences the way we currently perceive reality. As an aside,Aloka mentions that we are now beginning to move into a post-photographic era, known as 'digital imaging' 24 . This in its ownway will profoundly effect the way we see images and the worldaround us, as did the photograph in its own day. Perspective drawing was developed as a way of representingordinary everyday reality, although, in itself, it is based on afalse assumption, that light travels in straight lines. In fact,light travels in curves, which accounts for why perspectivedrawing, according to Aloka, 'looks more acute than thingsactually do' 25 . Developing the skill of appreciating theconventions of perspective also involves understanding theconvention of a snapshot of an instant in time as a good way ofrepresenting our experience as one whole. We tend to forget that

this is something we have learnt to do; there are people (andanimals) who cannot do this: show them a photograph and theycan't make sense of it. The nature of our experience of a particular 'thing' is notof 'one whole' but of a sequence of parts, and the parts areconstantly changing. This is because our eyes never stay stillfor a moment, adverting at one moment to one aspect of 'theobject', now to another, sometimes focusing in on detail, and atothers times taking in a broader focus. What we construct as onestable reality is actually made up of a summation from a sequenceof 'stills', each slightly different. David Hockney hasconstructed a series of pictures illustrating this: each one is acollage of photographs of a particular scene, each photographbeing focused on a slightly different aspect of the scene. Inthis way he suggests a more accurate manner of depicting how wereally go about seeing the world. By contrast, perspective drawing involves, according toDavid Hockney, being 'a frozen man with one eye looking through awindow'. If you want more details read Aloka's talks. (ibid.p.27f) With the convention of perspective drawing we look at thescene depicted in a picture, or photograph, from one particularpoint of view, and, once this point is determined, we cannotchange our relationship to what is depicted. Also, we view thescene portrayed in the picture or photograph from outside it as aspectator at a distance; we look in on the scene as through awindow, or through the frame of the picture. This means there isalways an irreducible gap between us and what we experienceoutside of ourselves. (ibid. p.30f). The phenomenon of whatBhante calls alienated awareness seems closely allied with thisway of 'not'-experiencing life. Somewhat naturally we assume that what we see with the eyeis real and true. But we forget that we interpret what comes tous through our various senses. We easily assume thatinterpreting our experience according to the conventions ofperspective drawing is the only way of perceiving what is realand true.

iii. The Indian Buddhist perspective I hope the connection between what I have been saying andour experience of space is clear. Our experience of space isstrongly conditioned by our cultural background; so it isimportant that we are familiar with our Western culturalconditioning. At the same time we are Buddhists, and thetraditional Buddhist conception of space is very different. AsGovinda says, 'while the Western experience of space wasincreasingly concerned with the optical and mathematicaldefinitions so that an inner feeling turned into the observationof external optical space, the Indian conception of space

developed in the opposite direction. Instead of exploringvisible space they regarded it merely as a projection of animperfect reflection or symbol of their inner experience andconsequently they dived into the centre of their own being, intothe depth of human consciousness in which the whole infiniteworld is contained.' 26 Govinda has a fair amount to say on this,both in the book just quoted and his 'Foundations of TibetanMysticism'. Space, to the Indian Buddhist, was much more to do with thenature of the mind; it was to be felt, explored and discovered inthe heart as an inner 'imaginal' (to use Bhante's term) dimensionof extension, expansion and movement, 'of which external space isa mere symbol, a reflection, limited by the finite qualities ofour eyes, our physical faculty of vision. In fact what we seewith our eyes is not space but only a world of light-resistingobjects which we interpret in terms of our inner spaceconsciousness.' 27

2. What is akasha? What is akasha? There are actually three terms describingdifferent dimensions of the term Akasha. We will look at each ofthese by turn.

i. Mahakasha 'Mahakasha' is used to describe the three dimensional spaceof sense perception. So all that has been said so far in thisand the previous talk by way of our common-sense understanding ofspace goes some way to explaining this level of akasha.

The primary nature of akasha Unlike the Newtonian view of space, Buddhism asserts thatour mind is the source of our experience of space. 'Space andtime are not objective realities external to consciousness butpart of the conditions under which it perceives things. ... Theelements of existence are not only mind-preceded (manopubbangama)and mind-determined (manosettha) but also made up or composed ofmind (manomaya)' 28 This is very much where we left off the lasttalk when I introduced Bhante's distinction that universality isan attitude of the individual, a way in which the individualfunctions, not an abstract notion, as it would appear that Newtonunderstood space to be. From the Buddhist point of view, anyparticular experience of space we have is part of the way wechoose, or our minds choose, to organise, structure and interpretour experience. 'Our consciousness determines the kind of spacein which we live, ... the way in which we are aware of space ischaracteristic of the dimension of our consciousness. The threedimensional space, which we perceive through our body and itssenses, is only one among the many dimensions.'29 (We could also

say the same for our experience of time, but let's not getinvolved in that one just yet!) Akasha is a function ofconsciousness, and a function of perception (samjna) i.e. theway we experience space is a reflection of the current nature ofour minds. This isn't such a strange assertion. After all, weare used to our emotions and our moods strongly affecting ourperceptions - even a bright sunny day can irritate us and make usfeel grumpy, or the opposite. Here I'd like to remind us of something in the last talk.We tend to think of space as just 'that-which-is-between-things',as an open gap or extension within which there is no anticipationof being impeded, as essentially unchanging in character at alltimes and places. We also think of space as being discrete andseparate from the objects we perceive to be in space, such thatspace is 'that-where-there-is-no-object'. So what we experienceis: object, space, object, space etc.; objects displace space,much like we might push water out over the sides of our bath whenwe get into it. In addition to the everyday view of space seen by theoptical eye, Buddhism stresses the possibility of awakening aninner, visionary eye. With this inner eye we see that there isvery much more to our normal perception of space, even asperceived through the gates of our five senses, than we think.According to Govinda we can come to see that 'All that is formedand that has taken spatial appearance by possessing extension,reveals the nature of akasha. Therefore the four great elementsor states of aggregation ... are conceived as modifications ofakasha ... in its grossest form akasha presents itself asmatter; in its subtlest forms it merges imperceptibly into therealm of dynamic forces {... [i.e.] all that causes movement,change or transformation [is]... prana'}. ... Akasha'snature is emptiness; and because it is empty, it can contain andembrace everything. ... {it}is the space within which allpossibilities of movement {prana}are contained, both physical andspiritual, that in which motion takes place, which makes movementpossible, 30 and is therefore that through which things stepinto 'visible' appearance. Akasha is the condition upon whichwhatever has extension, corporeality and form appears, withoutbeing itself movement or appearance. 'Space is the preconditionof all that exists, be it in material or immaterial form, becausewe can neither imagine an object nor a being without space.Space, therefore, is not only a conditio sine qua non of allexistence, but a fundamental property of our consciousness.' 31 This would suggest that akasha is even more mysteriouslymagical, illusive, indefinable, chimera-like, and deeply poeticalin nature than the great ghosts, the mahabhutas themselves.Akasha is the, as it were, esoteric dimension of the mahabhutas,the mahabhutas the exoteric expression of akasha.

We might find this odd! In our normal everyday experiencespace appears to be the opposite of the mahabhutas, or rupa.After all, we experience rupa as the intractable, 'objective'resistant content of our perception. Our perception of rupa isof differentiation, structure, partiteness, separateness, form,thingness. This is how we experience rupa in its variousdifferent forms. We see it as a 'thing', as somethingexperienced 'out there'. By contrast, we tend to experiencespace as that which offers no resistance, which has no structureand no form, and is insubstantial and impartite. Given these twoextremes of experience, how can the former come out of thelatter? It is not that our experience is false. The literalism ofdualistic thinking dupes us into mistaking space and rupa to bemutually exclusive. We see space, as it were, wrapping itselfaround objects: where there isn't an object there is space; spaceis that which is between objects; space is, in a sense, justanother object, albeit a non-material object. Inasmuch as wetreat all objects as discrete and separate one from another,obviously we conceive of space as different and separate from allother objects. If it is in one labelled box, it cannot be inanother one. But according to Buddhism, akasha is not distinctly separatefrom rupa, from the mahabhutas. Akasha is the subtler morerefined, even primordial, 'ground' of which the mahabhutas arethe discernible and apparent manifestation. We infer the natureof akasha from our experience of the mahabhutas. Akasha is thatwhich contains everything; and therefore, akasha is, if you like,the basic stuff out of which rupa arises. Akasha is a completeopenness and unboundedness of primordial energy from which othermanifestations and aggregations of energy arise. The nature ofakasha is revealed by all that has formed and has taken spatialappearance, and which possesses the different qualities ofextension and states of aggregation. That which is 'objective',or appears so, has so to speak a hidden non-'objective' dimensionto it. An analogy for this might be an iceberg, which has alarge bit one cannot see under the surface - we wouldn't be ableto see the bit above the sea if it were not for the bitunderneath; also, an iceberg is formed out of the sea. We should bear in mind that the intractable, resistant, andhence so called 'objective' pole of our perceptual experience isjust part of the picture, and that there are other less resistantdimensions to the perceptual experience as well. Because we canfeel something 'objective' and solid 'out there' does not meanthat therefore it is separate. I cannot help being reminded ofBhante's lumpy porridge analogy for the nature of reality. Thelumpy bits are what we perceive as the objective content of ourperceptions. But the lumpy bits are not separate from the rest

of the porridge; it's difficult to really ascertain where thelumpy bits stop, and the creamier bit starts. (I think this isin one of Bodhisattva Ideal mitratas)

b. Symbolic associations between akasha and the mahabhutas The interesting implication of what has just been discussedis that when we explore the nature of the mahabhutas we explorethe nature of akasha. Just as in the mandala the significance ofthe central focus is drawn out and explicated by that which is inthe different quarters, so, in exploring the mahabhutas, weinvestigate the nature of akasha. Akasha finds outwardexpression in the substance of the mahabhutas. Within the mandala of the five Jinas the correspondencebetween the mahabhutas and akasha and vijnana is made.Ratnasambhava is associated with Earth, Akshobya with Water,Amitabha with Fire, Amoghasiddhi with Air, and, at the centre ofthe mandala, Vairocana is associated with Space andConsciousness. Perhaps an interesting set of correspondencescould be worked out between all the various consorts or prajnasof the Jinas and Akashadhatesvari, Vairocana's consort, whosename means The Lady of the sphere of Akasha. In a very similar set of correspondences made within Tantricmeditation the different organs of the body are seen as differentmodifications or expressions of akasha. Particular bodily organsare imagined as cakras or lotuses, each with different numbers ofpetals. Currents of lunar and solar prana are imagined to flowthrough channels, or nadis, which pass through these cakras.Speaking very generally, through a conscious redirecting of thedynamic forces of prana within the alchemical crucible of yogin'sbody, each lotus cakra undergoes a transmutation, symbolised by ablossoming. In this way the yogin's spiritual identity, asmediated by his perception of akasha manifesting as themahabhutas of his body, is transmuted; the yogin distils andcreates in meditation a new spiritual body, his mano-maya-kaya. The Earth and Water Elements respectively correspond to theRoot Centre (muladhara-cakra), positioned in the plexus pelvis,and the svadisthana-cakra, positioned in the plexus hypogastricus(i.e. the organs of elimination and reproduction). In Buddhistpractice, these are usually taken as one. The Fire Element isassociated with the manipura-cakra, positioned in the solarplexus (i.e. above the navel, being near the organs of digestion,assimilation etc.). The Air Element corresponds with the heartcakra (anahata-cakra), and organs of respiration and heart. The three highest Centres are the Throat Centre (visuddha-cakra) positioned at the plexus cervicus, the centre between theeyebrows, and the crown centre (sahasrara-Padma). These threecentres correspond to higher dimensions of akasha, which mergewith prana. Often the upper two are regarded as one.32 It is

interesting that in Buddhist practice, we focus more on the uppercentres. For instance, as in the practice of salutation, wherewe recite OM AH HUM. I mention all this in response to some of your questions, byway of hinting in which direction you could go looking. It mayseem abstract, but the practice is actually rooted in theexperience of the body. It is not something 'out there', or justa theory on a piece of paper, but something which can be exploredwithin one's own experience. We don't have a formal explorationin these terms within the Order; perhaps some Order members mayexperiment at some point in exploring the implications of the SixElement practice in this sort of way.

2. Cittakasha: imaginal space Our feeling for the nature of akasha may develop further ifwe examine the meaning of the second dimension of akasha ascontained in the term cittakasha, literally 'the space ofconsciousness'. This is what Bhante defines as imaginal space,an inner dimension, an inner visionary space; it is the space youexperience when you enter into your own heart, entering fromwithin rather than from without. The word akasha comes from root'kas' meaning 'to radiate, or, to shine'. Hence akasha isexperienced as alive, and creative with emotional resonance -akin to ancient belief in the 'ether' of the 'firmament' i.e. asa medium for movement of the vital force (prana). This experience of akasha is inseparable from aloka, thelight that illuminates that space; this is the same lightapparently experienced in the after-death bardo. Light and spaceare one and same thing. We may find this notion rather odd,given our scientific metaphor of light rays travelling throughspace. But this light, aloka, does not spread out from a centralsource, as it does, say, from sun and stars; it is just one evenluminosity, radiating equally from every locus - like the deepblue luminosity of the sky. Increasingly, our experience of akasha in this innerdimension of the heart, in this imaginal space or inner visionaryspace, tends towards neither 'subjectivity' nor 'objectivity'; itis illuminated evenly; there is an even luminosity. Any sense ofboundaries becomes increasingly attenuated - like a very thinveil. The tendency is towards there being no differentiationbetween a subject viewing objects, as there is in our normal modeof perception. And hence there is no split between 'in here' and'out there', a 'me' looking out 'at something'. Instead thetendency is towards a state of deeply wholesome, tranquilintegration and harmonising: of all our energies, of inner andouter, of heights and depths. This is what I take to be theexperience of the 'space' or sphere of samadhi. The traditionalimage is of a man, who, after a walk in the very hot Indian sun,

has taken a bath in the refreshing waters of a cool lake, and isnow relaxing in the light breeze under the deep shade of trees,having covered himself in a thin cotton shawl. Bhante says it is difficult to appreciate this 'space' fromthe perspective of a common-sense level of consciousness, becausewe are bound to see it as an object, when it isn't. This innerimaginal space is a realm of visionary experience within which'objects' are not solid but are luminous, and radiant, made oflight, diaphanous and translucent, and although apparently 'outthere' and separate from us, are also paradoxically very much 'inhere' as part of us. These 'objects' interpenetrate one another,each reflecting one another, each shining within the other, each,in a sense, containing the other. Perhaps this is something ofwhat that great Visionary Blake meant when he wrote: To see a World in a Grain of sand And Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.33As an aside, these first few lines of his long poem are a preludeto an advocation of loving kindness, particularly towardsanimals, and those who are weak and cannot look after themselves. The image of the deep radiant blue depths of the evenluminosity of the sky is such a good image to act as a symbol of'not-two-ness', the transcendence of subject-object duality, andthe deeper unconditioned akasha-like nature of our minds.Clearly the blue sky has an important place in visualisation.Increasingly, as we refine more meaning and significance fromthis image, we get a sense of a radically different experience ofperception, which, from our point of view, will nevertheless tendto have an apparent bipolarity to it: that of object and subject,or of form and space, or space and movement, or of space andconsciousness. But in reality these 'things' are not two,although they appear inevitably to us to be to some extentseparate. As Govinda says, '... if we contemplate the mysteriousdepth and blueness of the firmament, we contemplate the depth ofour own inner being, of our own mysterious all-comprisingconsciousness in its primordial, unsullied purity: unsullied bythoughts and mental representations, undivided bydiscriminations, desires, and aversions. Herein lies theindescribable and inexplicable happiness which fills us duringsuch contemplation. From such experiences we begin to understandthe significance of the deep blue as the centre and starting-point of meditative symbolism and vision.' 34

iii. Cidakasha In the rest of this talk, I want to suggest how we may movetowards a perception of akasha at its highest level, which,according to some Abhidharmic classifications, is one of the

three Unconditioned dharmas. This highest level of akasha,cidakasha, is equated with sunyata, the subject-objectdistinction being eliminated. In this highest sense akasha is said to be the preconditionof all that exists, be it material or immaterial, and hence isinseparable from prana the principle of movement, the breath oflife, the all-powerful, all-pervading rhythm of the universe, theprimordial force manifesting in macro- and microcosms. 'Eh Ma Oh! Dharma Wondrous strange! Profoundest Mystery of the Perfect Ones. In the Unmoving, all things come and go, Yet in that movement, nothing ever moves.'These two, akasha & prana 'condition' one another, so to speak,like left & right, below&above, existence&non-existence. This Itake to be something of the meaning of the yab-yum of Vairocana -The Illuminator - and his consort Akashadhatesvari - The Queen ofthe Sphere of Space. Talking in this way we may perhaps have a sense that all ourterms are synonymous. This is in a sense true. We are, as itwere, approaching the top of the pyramid of the Six Elementpractice; and perhaps it doesn't matter which side of the pyramidthat we look at it from. We are talking about fundamentally thesame thing. When we look into the depths of akasha, we see intothe depths of our minds, into the essential nature ofconsciousness, and the fundamental nature of perception. When wepursue the next contemplation, that of Consciousness, we willeffectively cover much the same ground, but from a slightlydifferent point of view, or perspective. But essentially wetalking about the one and same experience.

Akasha as a higher level of 'being' So although we may well develop some feeling for thequalities of akasha in our more usual mundane world using ourinner imaginal eye, we experience akasha much more vividly anddirectly as an expression of higher levels of consciousness,within the dhyanas, in the Imaginal realm par excellence. Higherlevels of consciousness are higher levels of akasha; for example,the first arupa dhyana is the sphere of infinite space. It isnot surprising to find Bhante saying the sphere of infinite spacethat we experience in the first arupa dhyana is not a 'thing' weidentify as 'infinite space'; we experience space within our selfas a complete freedom from any obstruction. We feel as if wecould move unimpeded in any direction. [Having no first handexperience of this I cannot explain it any further.] These higher realms of space and consciousness are also therealms or the space of the Deva and Brahmalokas. Being higherrealms of space and light, they are also distinct levels ofbeing, so they body forth, as it were, in Pure forms. In these

higher realms of space we can meet higher beings such as Brahmas,literally 'beings of light', or devas, literally 'shining ones'. As an aside, it is an interesting fact that in Amitabha'spureland of Sukhavati there is no sun and moon. This indicatesthat Sukhavati is a manifestation of a higher realm of akasha.It also tends to indicate that only a higher level of being canenter a Bodhisattva's Pureland. We experience the manifestation of the mahabhutas on arelatively gross material plane with the familiar senseimpressions. At a higher level of consciousness, akasha, stillbeing the primordial source of form, bodies forth in purearchetypal forms, not apprehended through the senses. Thecapacity to experience higher levels of akasha and consciousnesshas to be brought into existence in the form of a subtle materialbody (the mano-maya-kaya); this is built up as a consequence ofdirected spiritual efforts. Once done, our new body has theperceptual capacity, the organs so to speak, to experience'beings' with archetypal forms. So instead of experiencingakasha and its manifestations optically as 'objects out there',as we do more usually on mundane levels of experience, weexperience akasha as 'in here' as well as 'out there'. The distinction between the two, 'in here' and out there',is rather nominal, more by way of trying to describe the actualexperience in language than inherent to it. The actualexperience of akasha is an aspect of how we are, how we havereorganised ourselves, reorganised our minds, reorganised ourbeing (which is incidentally one of Bhante's definitions ofmeditation.) This imaginal space is more akin to a mandala, a sphere orspace of great beauty, a perceptible experience of vast expansewithin which we meet 'beings', so to speak, of radiant light.This mandala of our new self is not static or inert, or passive(as we usually tend to think of and experience space); insteadour perception of time and space become integrated, so that ourexperience of this space is one of movement; this sphere is aliveand moving; it is dynamic; we are dynamic, we are moving in abeautiful luminous space, perhaps even dancing.

b. The dakini Another type of being we are very likely to meet in suchhigher realms of space is the dakini. In Tibetan, the word fordakini is khandroma (kha = space.); literally one who goes inspace. Govinda says a dakini is literally a heavenly being offemale appearance who moves about in space, partaking of itsluminous nature, appearing to earnest seeker as guide to lead himon way of higher knowledge. Being naked, dakinis embody naked,unveiled reality, and their stance is often heroic in attitude.Vessantara's book has an excellent chapter (No.23) on dakinis;

one of the points he makes is that dakinis actually appear inalmost every conceivable form e.g. Naropa's old woman. dakinis,from a more psychologically interpretative view-point are theflashes of 'inspiration, moods of great happiness andexhilaration, dauntless courage, sudden laughter, or totalrelaxation, the urge to give of ourselves completely, bursts ofenergy, poetry, and song.' 35 According to Guenther, thesedakinis transform the power of nature within us into the creativeconsciousness of genius, directing the forces of nature, whilsthaving the property of intensifying, concentrating andintegrating these energies until they are focused in oneincandescent point and ignite the holy flame of inspiration. Thehighest form of the dakini is the 'prajna' or female consort ofthe Jinas.

3. Conclusion We meet such wonderful and mysterious beings throughlearning how to 'experience' space in a completely different way.We have to awaken our imaginations, our imaginal faculty, andlearn how to connect with images that have symbolic significancefor us. Clearly this is all the easier through the direct mediumof higher meditative consciousness, but it is not the only way.Imagination is born of sraddha, intense spiritual effort, and awillingness to learn to look again. In other words, imaginationis also born of letting go of our habitual conditioning, wherebywe normally see 'an irreducible gulf between us and what we seeas being external.' 36 This is why I urged us to engage ineducating, or reeducating, ourselves our sensitivities,particularly through one or another of the arts. So I will letBhante have the last word, in a rather Edmund Lear fashion: 'We usually experience the things that make up the universeas being completely separate and distinct from one another, andwe can hardly imagine seeing things in any other way. Amountain, a bicycle, an ant, a block of flats, a policeman - justa mass of separate objects - this is how we see the world. Butin reality, so the Buddha says, it is not like that at all. Fromhis point of view - that is, from the point of view of thehighest spiritual experience - everything in the universe, greatand small, near and far, reflects everything else. All thingsreflect one another, mirror one another - in a sense they evencontain one another. This truth applies not only throughoutspace but also throughout time, so that everything that happensanywhere is happening here, and everything that happens at anytime is happening now. Time and space are transcended, all thecategories of logic and reason are superseded, and the world we'know' is turned upside-down37

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

1. Introduction We finally come to the Element Consciousness, probably themost difficult, by dint of being the most subtle, of all thereflections in which The Contemplation of the Six Elementsenjoins us to engage. I certainly know that I am very much abeginner and I presume that the majority of my audience is too.Consequently, as with all these talks, my intention is merely togive you some hint as to the direction in which you and I shouldbe going if we wish to really explore this subject fully. This is the most difficult intellectually of our reflectionsbecause the nature of our subject is elusive, and consequently itis not easy to articulate exactly what we mean, even if we knowwhat we mean! I often feel as if I create more questions than Ianswer. There is a very wide range of different approaches tothe topic of consciousness even within the Buddhist tradition,and some of them seem directly at variance with each other. Infact, there were long debates over very long periods of timebetween different schools of Buddhism concerning the nature ofconsciousness. So, when we open up Buddhist textbooks on thissubject, inevitably we find ourselves walking into a largeminefield . And experientially the contemplation of consciousness isdifficult because of the subtlety and refinement of awarenessrequired to see what is going on in our minds. We cannot do thisimmediately; in order to set up the appropriate conditions it isimportant to work our way systematically and organically througheach of the earlier stages of the Six Element practice. If we doso, we gradually and in quite a natural manner progressivelyrefine our consciousness to the point that, at the final stage ofthe practice, we can see the nature of our consciousness moredirectly for what it actually is. And, practically speaking,

that really is the pith instruction for these next two talks. That we should want to get to grips with this subject I takefor granted, particularly given the primacy of the place of themind in the Buddha's Teaching. In the first verses of theDhammapada the Buddha says, 'Skilful and unskilful mental statesare preceded by mind, led by mind, and made up of mind. If onespeaks or acts with an impure mind suffering follows him even asthe cartwheel follows the hoof of the ox. If one speaks or actswith a pure mind happiness follows him like his shadow that neverleaves38 Other translators' versions of these same verses are:'All that we are is the result of what we have thought' (trans.Babbit); 'Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what wethink.' (trans. Easwaran) The Buddha also says, 'i' 39 , But thenremarks, 'Hard it is to train the mind, which goes where it likesand does what it wants'.40 And elsewhere in the Dhammapada theBuddha marks out the consequences of engaging effectively, ornot, with our minds: '... a trained mind brings happiness. TheWise guard their minds, which are subtle and elusive, wanderingat will. A guarded mind brings happiness. /More than those whohate you, more than all your enemies, greater is the harm done tooneself by a wrongly directed mind. /Neither mother, father norany relative can do you as much good as a well-directed mind41And, 'Though one should conquer in battle thousands uponthousands of men, yet he who conquers himself is truly thegreatest victor. Conquer yourself and not others. When you liveever self-mastered and self-controlled, neither god, nor heavenlymusician nor yet Mara can undo that conquest.'42

2. The Shepherd's Search for Mind Perhaps the Buddha's observations will spur our curiosityand desire to make greater efforts to understand the nature ofour own minds. Such curiosity and passion for a knowledge of themind is a key feature of the well-known story 'The Shepherd'sSearch for Mind', from chapter 12 of the first volume of TheHundred Thousand Songs of Mila.repa; this tells of the shepherdboy Sangje Jhap's encounter with Mila.repa, and how this youngprodigy was drawn into becoming one of Mila.repa's foremostdisciples. So I am going to retell this story, partly in my ownwords, and partly using some key passages from the original. Mila.repa, as was his custom, was living in a cave up in themountains, but on this occasion not so distant from localsupporters. One day, two shepherd boys, out tending their flocksof goats and sheep, probably not too dissimilar from those on thehillsides here, encounter Mila.repa, and being curious to findout more about him, no doubt having heard something of him fromtheir elders, they draw Mila.repa into conversation. The youngerof the two, sixteen years old, and apparently the much moreconfident and curious, and indeed, rather more precocious,

eventually asks Mila.repa the unusual question: 'Is there onlyone mind in the body, or are there many? If many how do they livetogether?' Mila.repa may have been rather startled by this comingout of a sixteen year old shepherd boy. In any event, Mila.repacunningly challenges the boy, Sangje Jhap, to find out the answerfor himself. Undaunted, Sangje Jhap says that he will. Sangje Jhap returns the next day, having spent the nighttrying to find out the answer to his own question. He says toMila.repa, 'Dear Lama, last night I tried to find out what mymind is and how it works. I observed it carefully, found that Ihave only one mind. Even when we want to we cannot kill thismind. However much we try to dismiss it, it won't go away. Ifwe try to catch it, it cannot be grasped, nor can it be held bypressing it. If we want it to remain, it will not stay, if wewant it to go, it will not go. If we try to gather it, it won'tbe picked up. If we try to see it, it cannot be seen. If we tryto understand it, it cannot be known. If we think it is anexisting entity, and cast it off, it will not leave us. If wethink it is non-existent, we feel it running on. The mind issomething illuminating, aware, wide-awake, yet incomprehensible.In short it is hard to say what the mind really is.' I find thatvery impressive for a sixteen year old! It did cross my mind tojust set you the question, and see how you'd fare, but I wouldhave had to have hidden all the copies of The Hundred ThousandSongs! Anyway, Sangje Jhap then asks Mila.repa to explain themeaning of the mind. Mila.repa sings him a song by way of reply!I find this a touching scene: high up in the Himalayan mountainsa dishevelled, cotton clothed yogi, rather gaunt, perhapsslightly green coloured from all that nettle-eating, beingclosely questioned by this ardent, youthful, bright-eyed youngman. This is part of what Mila.repa sings: 'Listen to me, dearshepherd, the protector of sheep, /By merely hearing aboutsugar's taste, /Sweetness cannot be experienced. /Though ourmind may understand what sweetness is, /What sweetness is itcannot experience directly, only the tongue can know it. /In thesame way we cannot see into the full nature of the mind ...' With a little more conversation, Mila.repa entices the boyinto pursuing the riddle of the mind yet further, and Sangje Jhapfinds himself with some more 'home-work'. Mila.repa asks him:'What is the colour of the mind? What is its shape? Is itoblong, round, or what? Where does it dwell in the body?' The youth is keen to find out, and perhaps thinks he hasfound out the answer because he's back at Mila.repa's cave thenext morning at sunrise. And he tells Mila.repa what he hasdiscovered: 'It is limpid, lucid, moving, unpredictable, andungraspable, it has no colour or shape. When it associates withthe eyes, it sees; when with the ear, it hears, when with the

nose, it smells; when with the tongue, it tastes and talks; andwhen with the feet, it walks. If the body is agitated, the mind,too, is stirred. Normally the mind directs the body; when thebody is in good condition, the mind can command it at will, butwhen the body becomes old, decayed, or bereft, the mind willleave it behind without a thought as one throws a stone away.... It is clear to me that all my sufferings are caused by themind.' This lad is certainly perspicacious. Mila.repa is actuallyvery pleased with this answer, because he offers to show the boythe way to Enlightenment. In other words, he offers to becomeSangje Jhap's Guru. So this lad is doing very well for himself,isn't he? The boy immediately takes up the offer and is giventhe refuges by Mila.repa. In our terms Mila.repa ordains him.Mila.repa then sets him the task of repeating the refuge prayer,which presumably he has just recited formally after Mila.repa,constantly like a mantra, and asks him at the same time to findout the answer to the following question: 'Which takes refuge,the mind or the body?' The next day the boy returns. But this time he is rathermore perplexed by the consequence of his enquiries - things seemto be getting rather more complicated than they appeared at firstsight! He tells Mila.repa, 'As to which takes refuge, the mindor the body, I found that it is neither of them. Does the bodyas a whole take refuge? No, because when the mind leaves thebody, the latter disintegrates and no longer exists. Is it themind that takes refuge? The refuge seeker cannot be the mind, asthe latter is only the mind and nothing else. If the presentmind is the real mind, the succeeding one the refuge seeker,there will be two minds. The mind of yesterday has gone, that oftomorrow has yet to come, the present mind does not stay. Whenthe act of Refuge-seeking takes place, both the present andsucceeding minds have passed away.' The deeper meaning of whatSangje Jhap is hinting at I hope will come out in this and thesucceeding talk. What he has to say here is definitely worthpondering over. By way of response, Mila.repa sings him another song in thecourse of which he 'says' amongst other things: 'If we look intothis consciousness no ego is seen; of it nothing can be seen.Clinging to the notion of an ego is the characteristic ofconsciousness. See how wrong are the fears, hopes and confusion,and self-deception of one's mind.' Mila.repa then goes on to saythat practising the teaching of Mahamudra is what will resolvethe boy's questions, but that such practise requires 'greatfaith, humility and zeal' just for starters. He goes on tosing,'When you sought the "I" last night you could not find it./This is the practice of the Non-ego of Personality. /If youwant to practice the Non-ego of Existence, /Follow my example

and for twelve years meditate. /Then you will understand thenature of Mind'. So we can see from Mila.repa's comments that ifwe really want to pursue this subject, we have a lot of hard workto do. But Sangje Jhap is not put off; in fact, he is only moredetermined than ever before to understand the nature of his mind,and he offers himself completely to Mila.repa. Mila.repaobviously still needs more convincing that the boy is worthy tobecome a full-time disciple, so he tells the boy to meditate onthe image of the Buddha. Off the boy goes. The next thing thathappens is some time later, in fact seven days later: the boy'sanxious father arrives at Mila.repa's cave inquiring as to SangjeJhap's whereabouts. Mila.repa replies that he has not seen himfor a whole week. A big search-party is sent out, and finallythey discover the boy sitting in a clay pit, in meditationposture, with his eyes wide open and staring straight in front.He is oblivious to everything around him. Eventually when theyhave aroused him from his absorption, they ask him, 'What are youdoing here?' And Sangje Jhap replies, 'I am practising themeditation my Guru taught me.' 'Then why have you not returnedhome for seven days?' The boy replies rather indignantly, 'Youmust be joking, I've only been meditating for a little while!',but realises, as he says this, that the time of day is earlierthan when he had started meditating, upon which he becomes ratherconfused. For some time after this Sangje Jhap is continually getting'lost' in dhyana; as a consequence, he and the rest of his familybecome increasingly unhappy until his family finally decide itwould be best if he went to live with Mila.repa. This is ofcourse what Sangje Jhap wants most of all, and so happily he goesoff with their support to pursue his full-time discipleship underMila.repa's instructions. Although there is a happy ending to this particular story,the rigours of Sangje Jhap's journey are not over. In the finalsong of the account in The Hundred Thousand Songs Mila.repa isshown exhorting Sangje Jhap concerning some of the pit-falls thatwe can fall into even within deeper meditation. 'Alas! Those proficient yogis who long have practisedmeditation /Mistake the psychic experience of illumination /ForTranscendental Wisdom. /My dear son, listen to me carefully!/When you body is rightly posed, and your mind absorbed deep inmeditation, /You may feel that thought and mind both disappear;/Yet this is but the surface experience of Dhyana. /By constantpractice and mindfulness thereon, /One feels radiant Self-Awareness shining like a brilliant lamp, pure and bright as aflower, like the feeling of staring into the vast and empty sky./Awareness of Voidness is limpid and transparent, yet vivid.This Non-Thought, this radiant and transparent experience is but

the feeling of Dhyana. /With this good foundation /One shouldpray to the Three Precious Ones, and penetrate to Reality by deepthinking and contemplation. /He thus can tie the Non-ego Wisdom/With the beneficial life-rope of deep Dhyana.' There's actually a tremendous amount in this story, whichcovers much of the ground that I hope to say something about inthe course of the two talks on Consciousness. It is worth notingthat Bhante has done a seminar on this story; unfortunately wedon't seem to have a copy of it here at Guhyaloka. So I'm notgoing to comment directly on the story now, but probably willrefer to it by way of illustrating the points I want to make inthe rest of this talk.

3. Outline of the remaining talks We're exploring how to contemplate the ElementConsciousness. It may be that some of you will find thediscussion rather complex and conceptual. An important point tobear in mind is that pretty much whatever we say about the mindcan only be a metaphor; it can only suggest, or point out adirection in which we should go to experience the mind directly,face to face as it were. Whilst some models of the mind, such asthe abhidharmic analyses, are very much more complex than others,all of them assert the primacy of an unmediated explorationwithin our own direct experience. This is the main purpose forwhich these models have been constructed. So, whilst at first wemay find these models intellectually difficult to grasp, it'simportant to understand them for what they are: models. No onemistakes a map for the actual landscape, and yet as we canreadily appreciate a map can be very useful indeed. In the sameway, if we learn how to read the different models that have beenput forward by the Buddhist tradition to describe the experienceof our minds, we will be able to explore our minds much moreeasily. The only other way to go about exploring our minds is tosimply say, 'Off you go, you've got a mind, go and find out whatit's all about!' Obviously we've each got a mind, and our ownmind is the raw material with which each of us has to start. Butsomewhat reasonably most of us want rather more help than justbeing told this. Of course the nature of our minds is a hugesubject; and I suspect it gets more and more complex the more onelooks into it. And every now and again, we have to cut throughthe brushwood of detail and get back to the essentials.Inevitably in giving these talks I've only been able to touch ona number of different aspects of this massive area ofexploration. I hope I will not confuse you; my intention hasbeen to wet your appetite, so that you look in the books thatI've been exploring to at least get a better grasp of what theBuddhist tradition has to say.

The rest of this talk and the next one will explore fiveclosely related terms related to our English word Consciousness.These are vijnana, citta, manas, manovijnana, and alayavijnana -the first three often are used synonymously, although as I hopewill become clear each term has its own distinctive flavour. 43Actually it is the term vijnana which is used in the Pali suttasto describe the sixth stage in the Analysis of the Six Elements(dhatuvibhanga). To start with I'll be restricting my remarks towhat perhaps might be said to accord with the Theravadaperspective and then I'll say more to include the perspective ofYogacarin or Cittamatrin thought. Inevitably what I say wouldprobably satisfy scholars of neither school and is therefore tobe taken very much as by way of introduction. You will have todo your own research for more precise definitions of these termsand their dependent terms.

4. Vijnana - Consciousness1. it's dualistic character In the Six Element practice we are asked to become aware ofhow we are aware of the variety of different types of experienceswe have in our body, and then to extend this investigation to allthe different types of experiences we are aware of having of theexternal world. So for example, we might examine a particularlyfamiliar experience: sitting on our chair. When we become awareof sitting in our chair, there are two obvious and immediatelyprominent aspects to the experience. Firstly we have a sense ofsomething being experienced, i.e. the external sensations ofsitting in the chair, and secondly a sense of someone, i.e.'me', experiencing sitting in the chair. There is an experienceof 'something' being known by a knower. The roots of the word vijnana point to the divisive natureof our normal state of consciousness, the bipolarity in ourawareness of our experience. The prefix 'vi' means 'to divide' -and the Indo-European root 'jna' means 'to perceive', 'to know', 44and so is closely related to the Greek term 'gnosis' and Latinterm 'cognitio'. The nature of our perception is to divide ourexperience by making a distinction between that of a subjectivesense of someone, i.e. a 'me', having the perception, and anobjective content of the perception which 'me' is having. One of the most fundamental ways we divide our experience isin terms of time and space: but, '...space and time are notobjective realities external to consciousness but part of theconditions under which it perceives things'45 . This is actuallyan extraordinary statement - think about it! In the first five stages of the Six Element practice, weexplore the objective content of our perceptual experience.When we come to contemplate the Element Consciousness in thesixth stage of the practice we review our perceptual experience

as a whole, whilst concentrating more particularly on what wemight call the subjective pole of our experience. In otherwords, we set out to examine in more detail just how and in whatsense we have this very tenacious and distinctive experience ofan 'I' experiencing something objective. Of course, in doing so we cannot neglect the fact that thisexperience of an 'I' is intimately bound up with experiencing anapparently objective content 'out there'. Consequently ourinvestigation of consciousness in the sixth stage necessarilyexplores the objects of consciousness, and the nature of thefeeling of a 'me' in relationship to them. This is what we'reasked to do in the initial stages of the contemplation ofConsciousness in the Six Element practice. When we examine the nature of our normal experience, werecognise the distinctively divided character of vijnana by thefact that we distinguish between different objects within ourexperience. We have an experience now of 'this', and now of'that', each experience separated one from another within a time-space framework. This vijnana of ours is a subtle tool, which can be honed tohave a great deal of flexibility and ability to distinguish awhole spectrum of very fine or broad-based distinctions. Forexample, whilst distinguishing between aspects of our experience,we can often allow any one 'thing', so to speak, to slide intothe next 'thing'. We may not wish to distinguish so closelywithin our experience to the point of having a succession of verydiscrete packages or parcels, so to speak, of experience, oneexperience completely separate from another - (unless of courseour experience is involved with that which we like and dislike,in which case we are very keen to separate them out!) What wefind is we can have both a broad spectrum of experience, and yet,within that range, the capability of focusing in on particularaspect of it, making any particular 'part' of it distinct andseparate from another within our awareness. Take for example one of the dramatic thunder-storms thathappen out here. Within our overall experience of a thunder-storm, we will have discrete experiences such as the flashes oflightning, and the claps of thunder, both of which we candistinguish one from the other in terms of time and space. Thethunder-claps and flashes of lightning appear to be discreteexperiences often happening in different places at differenttimes, although part and parcel of the same general experience.And to illustrate my point yet further, we may at the same timeas watching the thunderstorm, also be eating a meal, having aconversation, which all go to make up our general experience ofthat particular occasion.

ii. It's momentary nature

In the Six Element practice we develop our ability to makeever finer distinctions within the time-space framework.Consequently, we find that any particular experience can alwaysbe subdivided, and that subdivision can usually be subdividedagain, and so on, until, according to the Abhidharma, we arecapable of making distinctions within consciousness which onlylast for a fraction of a moment. In this way the character ofconsciousness, vijnana, can be discovered to be momentary; eachmoment or 'flash' of consciousness is said to be separate anddistinct from the one before and the one after it. Despite otherdifferences this is something upon which all schools of Buddhismagree. The momentary nature of consciousness is a very importantinsight at which to arrive. This insight undermines ourconviction of being or possessing a separate, stable, unitary,substantial, independent and permanent 'mind' and 'self', which,as the permanent subject of experience observes the flow ofdifferent objects of perception externally. Our use oflanguage and such terms as 'my mind' promotes the wrong view ofthere being a 'something', normally what we think of as 'me',that subsists unchanging throughout the ever changing ebb andflow of experience. But since 'the moment before has gone andthe moment to come does not yet exist' applying a sense of anenduring, stable, unitary self to such an ephemeral phenomena asthe mind seems ludicrous 46 . Subhuti likens the stream ofmomentary flashes of consciousness to the way that a TV screenrefreshes itself all the time. Apparently the pixels, of whichthe screen is made, are constantly being relit one after anotherin a sequential order: left to right, from top to bottom. Theseemingly stable image we see on the screen is actually beingconstantly adjusted and shifted as the electrical charge crossesthe screen. Subhuti comments that our minds are a bit like that:each moment, or fraction of a moment, is akin to an individualpixel on a TV screen; the totality of our awareness constantlyrecharges itself by a recurring reapplication of attentiveness todifferent objects of consciousness. The question then arises: what is it about our experiencethat makes it seem so stable? And where does this this subjectivesense of self arise? There are many answers to such a question;here is one. The apparent stability of our minds expresses ourpreoccupation with a particular mode of consciousness, one thatis wrapped up with Rupa: we are entranced by the maya of the theFour mahabhutas and their secondary qualities. Because ourexperience of rupa, both within our body and in the externalworld, seems stable and enduring, both in terms of time andspace, we fool ourselves into extrapolating this apparentstability and coherence to the subjective pole of our experienceas well.

Strangely enough, from the Buddhist point of view the bodywould be a much more satisfactory phenomenon with which toidentify a self, because it is much less evanescent and momentaryin character than the mind. But then of course Buddhism is seton eliminating such a belief all together. In the Six Elementpractice we contemplate the demise of our body through theenforced giving up of our bodily association with the mahabhutas.To the extent we do identify a sense of self with the body, whichinevitably we do do to some extent, we are forced to contemplatethe relative impermanence of that selfhood. Despairing of thebody as a secure haven for our sense of self the practice leadsus to a direct investigation of the mind and the momentary natureof consciousness.

iii. At the meeting of sense-object and organ The fact that vijnana is one of the skandhas draws ourattention to another meaning to the term. To jog your memory: askandha is a 'heap'; it is a labelled category in much the sameway that we might see an area of a grocer's labelled Grains, orPulses-and-Beans, or Vegetables, or Dairy products and so forth.Within any particular category we will find a wide variety of yetfurther sub-categories: Grains are made up of Rices, Oats,Wheats, Sorghums etc. Within each of these there are yet furtherdifferent categories. So vijnana is not 'a permanent unchangingelement or ultimate principle of consciousness, but is simply thecollective term for all our evanescent mental states.'47 The process of categorising could theoretically produce aninfinite variety of possible categories. We saw something ofthis at work within the Abhidharma's definition of the secondaryqualities of rupa. And, 'The Theravadin Abhidhamma ...distinguishes within the 'heap of consciousness' no less than 89different types of 'grain', each consisting of an infinite numberof infinitesimally minute 'particles'. Of these [different typesof grain], 21 are karmically wholesome, 12 unwholesome, and 55neutral.' 48 . By contrast to the Abhidharma the method of analysisemployed within the Sutta tradition is relatively simple: ...In the Pali suttas six classes of consciousness aredistinguished, each representing the series of infinitesimallybrief 'flashes' of consciousness that arise in dependence on theconjunction of a sense-organ with its particular sense-object. 49As Sangje Jhap says to Mila.repa, 'When [the mind] associateswith the eyes, it sees; when with the ear, it hears, when withthe nose, it smells; when with the tongue, it tastes and talks;and when with the feet, it walks.' The six categories of objectsare: sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tangibles and the objects ofthe mind: thoughts, images, moods etc.; the last category of mindis something Sangje Jhap doesn't mention.

To make this clear: each sense-consciousness arises independence upon the conjunction of a particular sense-organ withits sense-object. So there are six sense-consciousnesses:consciousness of sight, consciousness of sound, consciousness ofsmell, consciousness of taste, tactile (body) consciousness, andmental or thought consciousness (manovijnana). Although the process is simple enough, it is worth spellingout here. We know any particular consciousness, e.g. sight-consciousness, has arisen when we are aware that there is contactbetween what we perceive to be an external sense-object, such asa sight, and the appropriate sense-organ, in this example theeye. To give a particular instance: the way we make sense of ourexperience of a candle is from the light, coming from the candle,entering our eyes, where there is then contact between the eye-organ and the light, of which we then become aware. Through becoming involved with each of the differentcategories of sense object, '... consciousness is involved in aprocess of perpetual objectification of itself to itself ...' 50It is through the conjunction of an object of consciousnessmediated by the sense object that consciousness, as it were,'knows' it is there; it objectifies itself to itself. In moreeveryday language, we talk of 'sensing' or 'making sense' of ourexperience i.e. vijnana is that activity of making sense of ourexperience, coming to 'know' it through the senses. We come tobe aware, and to be aware of being aware, through employing thisdiscriminative awareness: this is a knowing which is, as it were,split or divided, which arises through splitting and dividing,and thereby objectifies itself to itself, reflecting itself backto itself. The analogy of light with consciousness is common inBuddhist literature. And of course the nature of light hasfascinated our modern day explorers, the physicists. A modernresearcher recently conducted a scientific experiment in which heviewed an empty box filled with bright light, but whereparticular care had been taken to ensure that the light in thebox did not illuminate any interior objects or surfaces in thebox - quite how this was achieved I'm not sure, but is explainedat some length in the researcher's book. As the author asks, Thequestion is: What does one see? How does light look when leftentirely itself? ... Absolute darkness! I see nothing but theblackness of empty space.' But if an object was made to movethrough that space, it became brilliantly lit up. He concludes,'without an object on which light can fall, one sees onlydarkness. Light itself is always invisible. We see only things,only objects, not light. 51 And apparently the same is true ofouter space: astronauts find that they are bathed in strongsunlight, and yet if there is no object to reflect the light,there is only darkness.

In a similar fashion we become aware by our consciousnessbeing reflected back to us via the conjunction of sense-objectand sense-organ. If the analogy holds, it raises the fascinatingquestion as to what consciousness is like if it doesn't have asense-object and sense-organ with which to associate. When wedie, consciousness can of course no longer be associated with aphysical sense organ; and when we meditate we withdraw ourawareness from the senses. According to Sangje Jhap'sinvestigations: 'If we try to see it, it cannot be seen. If wetry to understand it, it cannot be known. If we think it is anexisting entity, and cast it off, it will not leave us. If wethink it is non-existent, we feel it running on. The mind issomething illuminating, aware, wide-awake, yet incomprehensible.In short it is hard to say what the mind really is.' Let us return to the traditional analysis of our experienceinto this threefold format of contact between sense-organ withrespective sense-object giving rise to the respective sense-consciousness. If each element of this analysis is added up overthe six sense objects we have the eighteen physical and mentalelements (dhatu) traditionally enumerated that constitute theconditions or foundations of the process of perception. Dhatu orelement is also the term used in the Pali canon to describe thesix particular elements we take up in the Six Element practice.In fact it seems that the term dhatu is extensively used todescribe a large number of different experiences, a bit like theway we use the term 'energy'. In the Six Element practice weconsider the six Elements, or mahabhutas, or dhatus of Earth,Water, Fire, Air, Akasha and Vijnana, as well as detailing ourexperience of Vijnana in more depth according to this second listof 18 dhatus.52 The fact that consciousness can be bound up with each of thedifferent sense organs, which are distributed all over the body,means that our consciousness is wherever we choose to be aware ofcontact between a sense-organ and its respective sense-object.It's quite important to get a strong sense of our flexibility inthe locating our consciousness - surprisingly for some, it isnews that consciousness is not exclusively restricted to ourheads! Although it is understandable that we should stronglyassociate our heads with our consciousness because our eyes,nose, tongue and ears are located in our heads. The important point to reflect on is that we choose to beaware of different sense stimuli, both within the body andexternal to it, and, in choosing, our consciousness moves to thesense-organ concerned. Depending on what we choose to be awareof, so we create, so to speak, the corresponding experience ofour self and the world. That we create 'our world' is actually aprofound point worthy of much reflection. But even in a quitesimple strait-forward sense, we can learn to recognise that

through habitual patterns of attentiveness to different senseobjects we come to see a particular world characteristic to us.To give some examples: some people arrange their worlds aroundpubs and newsagents that sell particular brands of cigarettes,others arrange their worlds around pretty men or women, othersaround types of motor-cars and so on. Normally the way we select where we locate ourconsciousness, particularly in our body, is relativelyunconscious. But a moment's reflection shows that we have thecapacity to become conscious in many parts of our body. It isworth experimenting with this, consciously moving our awarenessaround our bodies. Doing so gives us a much more grounded senseof ourselves; assuming that we manage to stop telling ourselvesto do it, and just do it. If we are still in our heads, so tospeak, thinking about being aware of, say, our feet, ourconsciousness is still much more predominantly in our heads thanin our feet. This is something we can learn to do very muchbetter than we usually 'think' than we can, with very beneficialphysical consequences. This constitutes a substantial aspect ofsuch disciplines as Hatha Yoga, T'ai Chi, Feldenkrais, andAlexander Technique to mention just a handful of examples. Asidefrom the physical benefits, learning how to move ourconsciousness around our body and around the world about us givesus a much deeper experience of the momentary nature ofconsciousness. Not only can we learn to become much more conscious ofphysical sense experience, we can also learn to become very muchmore conscious of the other objects of the mind. We cover thisfully in the next talk. In doing so, we are not just aware ofthe objects of mind in a passive manner, but actively distinguishbetween them in all sorts of ways, and furthermore we develop thecapacity to selectively cultivate some rather than others throughbringing them more into our conscious attention. Of course thisis what we are doing in meditation all the time; the art ofmeditation is this skill par excellence, as is the trainingdiscipline of sila. For instance when in this practice we areasked to contemplate with the heart, this is because maintainingour awareness principally in that particular part of the body, aswell as allowing it to extend to other sense organs, prevents usgetting to 'caught up in our heads' as we say, inasmuch as theexperience of spiritual emotions seems to be strongly associatedwith the 'heart centre'. Keeping a strong emotional connectionalive whilst reflecting is crucial to successful contemplationand it works against mere intellectualising. I'll leave the Buddha with the last word: '... a trainedmind brings happiness. /The Wise guard their minds, which aresubtle and elusive, wandering at will. /A guarded mind bringshappiness. /More than those who hate you, more than all your

enemies, greater is the harm done to oneself by a wronglydirected mind. /Neither mother, father nor any relative can doyou as much good as a well-directed mind.' 53

10. THE NATURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS

1. Introduction 2. Citta 3. Mental events i. The complex interactive nature of the mind ii. Phassa - 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

1. Introduction There is no such thing as the mind, not in the sense ofthere being an identifiable thing that we can get our hands onand examine as we can with the body, identifying bones, muscles,organs etc. The word 'mind' is just that: a word. It indicatesa category, a label describing an identifiable 'heap' ofcontinuously changing 'mental' processes; these come and go in somany different combinations that any particular mental 'state'is, in fact, unique, albeit sharing characteristics with othermental states. Inevitably, whenever we look into our minds, weare looking into something which is unique: each time we look, weencounter a unique phenomenon in the history of our mind. At thesame time, different 'types' of mental states share similarcharacteristics, traits and tendencies. The mind is just a wordwhich simply describes the complex phenomena of mental processes. To illustrate the nature of the mind I particularly like themetaphor of the light box, which I described in my last talk.The box is set up in such a way that we know it to be full ofbrilliant light. And yet strangely we cannot see anything insidethe box - nothing at all - until an object is made to passthrough it: then the object becomes brilliantly lit up. As soonas the object is no longer there, the box goes black once again.

In a similar way, we sense that our minds as fully alive, as iffull of brilliant white light; but we do not 'see' anything ofour mind until an 'object' passes through it. The Buddhisttradition identified a number of different categories of mentalobjects which, as it were, pass through the mind and which giveus some feeling for what the mind is; yet, unlike in the analogyof the box and the objects being made to pass through it, themind and its mental objects are not discrete, separate entities. In this second talk on the Element Consciousness we willinvestigate the character of different categories of mentalobjects. To do so we need to acquaint ourselves with the termcitta, which of course means mind. Citta often has a much widermeaning than vijnana, and there are often quite differingmeanings attributed to it. I am not going to explore all thosedifferent meanings here, but it is as well to know this to avoidconfusion when reading different texts. After investigatingcitta and the different categories of mental objects, we willlook at the terms manas and manovijnana before passing on tobriefly explore the Absolute Mind. The talk will then finish bylooking at a classic source from the Pali Canon for the SixElement practice, and in particular pay attention to theimplications of the Buddha's comments for contemplatingConsciousness.

2. Citta All schools of Buddhism agree that, despite the way we uselanguage to the contrary, there is no such thing as the mind inthe sense of a separate, stable, independent entity that is thepermanent subject of experience. But this is exactly how wehabitually interpret our experience: a mind or ego that is thepermanent subject of our experience, illuminating our experience,a subjective source lighting up the objects of consciousness. Anot inappropriate analogy for this is a beam of light, lightingup now this and now that; but this is simplistic. The notion ofmind (citta) in Buddhism is much more complex than the terms ofthis analogy initially suggest. If we were to use this analogyappropriately from the Buddhist point of view, we would also haveto include a host of additional factors such as the way in whichthe objects are illuminated - the angle and breadth of focus ofthe beam, the manner in which particular aspects of the object(s)are highlighted, the colour of the light, the way the light isreflected and absorbed by different objects and so on. The key to investigating the mind from the Buddhist pointof view lies in the momentary nature of consciousness (citta-kkhana) - we covered this in the last talk. Consciousness lastsonly for a moment! This is quite contrary to our everydayexperience: we assume the existence of a stable and permanentlylasting substance. According to the Pali commentaries each

discretely separate moment of consciousness is said to last forno longer than the billionth part of the time occupied by a flashof lightning. What we experience as the mind is a stream(vijnana-srota) of momentary flashes of consciousness, onefollowing on from the next, each arising in dependence on thepreceding one. Buddhaghosa likens the mind to a forest monkey,or a wild horse, presumably having in mind that neither staysstill for a moment. A personal image which I like is of 'ababbling brook', sparkling in the sunlight, several differentstreams of water falling over rocks, coming together at onemoment, then parting and so on. The Abhidharma systematised the mind's complexity: even anapparently simple unit (cittavithi) of sense-perception, e.g.seeing a candle, is made up of as many as seventeen quitedistinct 'moments', 'functions' or 'phases' (vinnana-kicca) ofconsciousness, one following on from the other in rapidsuccession, all of them occurring within the briefest flash of amoment.54 Although the Abhidharma can appear abstract to us, itsauthors claim that their analysis arises from their ownexperience; their system is not merely intellectually derivedfrom conceptual premises. As yet I'm unable to verify thedetails for myself; we will all probably have to carefully watchour experience for some time to be deeply convinced of themomentary nature of consciousness. After all, we actuallyexperience a lot of things as stable and permanent. Take, forexample, even something as apparently temporary as a candle.Whilst we know the candle is burning down, nevertheless we tendto think of the flame as being the same flame which burns all thetime until the candle is burnt up. This is the more normal waythat we tend to think of what is happening. But a few momentsthought will show us that it is not actually the same flame frommoment to moment, and there never can be a single, independentflame which endures throughout the time the candle is burning.All we can really say by way of trying to represent the factsmore accurately is that whilst the candle is alight, there isjust a continual process of burning, the incandescence of whichwe see flaming in a characteristic manner. 55 We are told that, if we carefully analyse our experience, wewill come to see increasingly clearly that the content of ourconsciousness is continually changing, flowing like a river fromone moment to next, from one object to another. As I havealready said the clearer we become of this momentary nature ofconsciousness the more absurd it becomes to attach a sense of'self' or a sense of a 'knower' or of an 'experiencer' having anexperience to any one particular moment of consciousness and itsattendant object. Clearly the momentary nature of consciousnessundermines the belief in a permanent enduring, self-sustaining

self (attavada). It is far better to think of our minds havingmuch more the character of a river or stream, dynamic andconstantly changing, than of something as apparently stable andunmoving as a rock, the latter being probably closer to ournormal conception of our mind. Like a river of water constantly moving onwards and towardsits goal, the primary feature of the mind (citta) is to reachout, or stretch out towards, even seize hold of, an object which,through this act, it apprehends or discriminates as beingdistinct and of a specific character different from all the otherpotential objects of perception. 56 Guenther gives a furthertwist to this function in translating citta as 'attitude' in thesense of being that which builds up its own continuity by way ofwhat he calls 'apperceptive [being aware of perceiving]processes'.57 The mind generates a sense of its own continuity bybecoming aware of its own processes; 'it' knows it's there, and'it' knows that it continues to be there because there are'objects' or mental events which pass through it.

3. Mental Events Nevertheless even though we talk of the mind (citta) in thisway, it is not a phenomenon existing by itself detached fromother psychic factors or mental objects; it is intimatelyconnected with all of them and only precedes them by way ofbeing, so to speak, their elder brother or being like a king whois always understood to be accompanied by a retinue ofattendants. This is a traditional analogy: the king is the keyperson, but is only king by virtue of being surrounded by hissubjects.58 In the same way the ordinary mind is never foundseparate from it's accompanying mental objects. Citta is always accompanied by what are termed mental events(cetasika); these are the different ways in which the mindbecomes involved with the object of its perception. Particularmental events give the stream of the mind its particularcharacter and flavour at any one moment, rather as some riversare fast-flowing, falling and tumbling over rapids, otherssleepy, slow, and meandering, others deep and powerful and yetdeceptively placid. The difference between the two, citta andcetasika is likened to the following analogy: citta is theactivity of recognising someone in a crowd of faces; cetasika,mental events, is the activity of remembering whether we likethem or not, and in what manner we are choosing to respond tohaving seen them. The characteristic activity of citta, per se,is the simple action of picking out or distinguishing a'particular category' from the chaos of sense impressions thatare pressing in on our senses all of the time. In other words,it is the process of highlighting some 'thing', making itprominent within a 'background' of other 'things.'

The principal types or categories of mental events, agreedupon by all schools as being omnipresent or present whenever themind perceives an object and moves towards it are the following:sense impression (sparsa /phassa), feeling (vedana),interpretation or perception (sanna), and will or volition(cetana = samskara). Advertance (manasikara), concentration(samadhi) and vitality (jivata) are also generally included - andsome schools include several other items. This list ofomnipresent cetasikas obviously closely mirrors the list of thefour mental skandhas (vedana, samjna, samskara, vijnana). In addition to these omnipresent cetasikas there are a largenumber of positive and negative 'optional' cetasikas. They areoptional in the sense that we can, and do, choose to cultivatethem more or less consciously. The positive cetasikas are highlysignificant in terms of spiritual life: sraddha, hri, apatrapya,virya, ahimsa, apramada to mention some of the most prominent.59 All the categories of omnipresent mental events areinseparable. The Buddha makes this point: 'Whatever there existsof feeling, of perception and of consciousness, these things areassociated, not dissociated, and it is impossible to separate onefrom the other and show their difference. For whatever onefeels, one perceives; and whatever one perceives, of that onedistinguishes.60 . And again elsewhere he says, 'Impossible is itfor anyone to explain ... the development of consciousnessindependent of corporeality, feeling, perception and mentalformations.' 61 The point is that although we may be particularlyaware of a one mental event, inevitably, whether we are aware ofit or not, the other omnipresent mental events will be there too.For example, a feeling or a volition does not exist on its own.Perhaps it is a bit like the colours of a rainbow: they appear tobe different, but they are all merge together as part of the onecontinuous experience. Whilst these omnipresent mental event are always present,only one or another type of particular mental event from withineach category is present at any one moment. In this way, forexample, it is not possible for there to be both pleasant,painful and neutral feelings present at one and the same moment.Only a pleasant, or a painful, or a neutral feeling can bepresent at any one moment. To illustrate this point: forexample, associated with the visual sense-impression and eye-consciousness will be, say, a feeling of pleasure, as well as aparticular interpretation labelling it as 'this' or 'that', and adefinite inclination, perhaps to move towards it, oralternatively to move away from it. We cannot be wanting to movetowards and away from something at the same moment in time.Prevarication, conflict and hesitation are states alternating ina cycle between these two inclinations.

a. The complex interactive nature of the mind If we explore the mind's principal mental events we get asense of what it is that we call the mind. The mind is thatdiscriminative awareness which reaches out to distinguish and toknow it's object of perception. And the mind is intimatelyassociated with mental events, such as with a feeling tone thereare also sense impressions, which is determined by the process ofperceiving and ordering those sense impressions into a coherentpicture in accordance with our previous experience, as well as inrelation to our current and past volition and attitude towardslife. The mind's mental processes are more complex still by dintof there being six sense consciousnesses, five relating to thephysical senses and the sixth, the manovijnana, which might bebest called the intellect. The latter not only receives the fivephysically-based sense consciousnesses and works them up intosomething of meaning and significance, but also distinguishesimmaterial mental objects such as concepts, ideas, images,feelings, which can be categorised if we wish under the headingsof vedana, samjna, cetana. This description of mine seems toclosely mirror how Buddhaghosa describes mind-consciousness 62Incidentally this approach to the contemplation of Consciousnessin the Six Element practice seems to mirror what is involved indeveloping the last three stages of the Four Foundations ofMindfulness: Feelings, Citta, and Mental Objects (dhammas orcetasika). The implication is that the Six Element Practice is aform of, or extension of, the Four Foundations of Mindfulness.

b. Sparsa - Sense impression I will now briefly enumerate what is meant by each of thesedifferent categories of mental events. First of all let's lookat the mental event of sense impression, sparsa or phassa. Inthe last talk we distinguished the six categories ofconsciousness (vijnana) which arise in dependence upon contactbetween their respective sense organ, and sense object. Theconjunction of these three elements (dhatu) of sense-object,organ and consciousness constitutes the mental event of senseimpression (sparsa /phassa) 63 . This definition clearly does notnecessarily signify physical contact, which is a commonmisunderstanding of the term sparsa. It is through the activity of sense impression that webecome aware of the mahabhutas and the Element Space. We eitherperceive the different mahabhutas directly or we infer theirexistence through one or another, or a combination, of ourdifferent sense impressions; in the course of the Six Elementpractice we reflect upon just how we do this. When we do so, weremember that sparsa also includes the apprehension of 'mentalobjects' (dhamma-dhatu) of the mind by the mind organ (mano-

dhatu): for example, memories and mental images, as well as theother objects of mind, which are categorised under suchcategories as feelings, interpretations, and volitions. All ofthis gives rise to what is termed the mind consciousness(manovijnana).64 Since our sense impression of the mahabhutas isnot discrete and separate from the other more subjectiveomnipresent mental events, it follows that our apprehension ofthe mahabhutas is subjective. I hope this answers one of your questions which was alongthe lines of 'where do our moods, likes, aversions and so forthfit into the practice?'. Well, they fit in here: we bring tomind that we have different types of moods, feelings and imagesassociated with these moods. These are mental objects (dhammas)which arise in relation to being observed by a mind-organ (mano-dhatu), in the same way that we distinguish objects passing infront of our visual eye, for example a butterfly. In the sameway, even the notions of identity: 'I', 'me', 'myself', 'myattributes', 'what belongs to me', what is 'mine', are mentalobjects. And even what we call self-consciousness is becomingaware of ourselves as an object: we form ideas, notions and viewsabout our self, as being this or that sort of a person, withcertain personality traits, talents, capabilities. All of these events are mental objects of sense impression.So in the practice at this stage we can remind ourselves of thisfact: that all these different objects of mind are aspects ofeither physical and mental sense impression. And we can learnhow to distinguish more clearly between them, as well asexploring just how and where we get our sense of their permanencyand substantiality. So for example we might have a very strongsense that we are a certain type of person with certain strongcharacter traits. That impression is said to be a mental object.So how has that impression come to be? Where have we got thatfrom? And in what way do we continue to reinforce it, and ensurethat it is a permanent part of our 'psychic furniture'?

c. Vedana - feeling Sense impressions will of course include being aware of ourfeelings (vedana), which automatically arise in dependence onsense impressions (sparsa). We are familiar with thisrelationship from the enumeration of the nidana chain of theWheel of Life. It is as well to remember that the term vedanadoesn't just cover immediate hedonic feelings of pleasure or painsuch as a mosquito bite or when we see (or anticipate eating) oneof Vimalabandhu's mushroom fritters! Vedana also includes ourgeneral feeling tone, or mood, i.e. that which 'colours' thecontent of our experience with a characteristic ambiance ofpleasure or pain or indifference and so forth.

d. Samjna and cetana -interpretation & volition In the course of our reflections it's important to rememberthat our minds are not as mechanical as might be suggested bythis description of the conjunction of sense-object, organ andarising sense-consciousness along with the resultant feeling.The world of which we become aware is as much to do with ourinterpretation (samjna) of our sense experience as with theuninterpreted sense experience. I made this point in the secondtalk. Furthermore, the choices that we make in choosing whatsense impressions to attend to, and what kind of interpretationwe make of them are an aspect of our volition (cetana). And ofcourse what we decide to do in dependence upon all of these othermental events is also volitional. So you can see I hope fromthis description that all the omnipresent cetasikas are indeedwrapped up one with another. Arthur Zajonc, the author of the book Catching the Lightfrom which I quoted earlier, illustrates this point about what webring to our perceptual experience by quoting examples of thecongenitally blind who have had their eyes restored to perfectbiological health and yet who still cannot see normally in thesense of being able to make sense of the experience of lightimpacting on the eyes. Much to the surprise of the opticalsurgeons conducting these operations they found that theirpatients had to be taught how to see, which was something thepatients found very difficult, and often failed to followthrough, despite the restoration to perfect health of their organof sight. He concludes that, 'vision requires far more than afunctioning physical organ. ... The cognitive capacities we ...possess define our world, give it substance and meaning. ...Besides an outer light and eye, sight requires an 'inner light',one whose luminance complements the familiar outer light andtransforms raw sensation into meaningful perception. The lightof the mind must flow into and marry with the light of nature tobring forth a world.' 65 The 'inner light', to which he refers, inour terms is the coming together of all other mental factorsnecessary to making sense of the impact of light on the eye'sretina. I hope you can see the mistake which can be made througha simplistic scientism: light impacts on the retina, and withthat event there will be recognition of the source from whichlight has come. But the Buddhist analysis has never allowed forit to be as simple as that. Buddhism says that we make sense ofsuch an impression, which is of course what these opticalsurgeons discovered: that we build or bring meaning out of senseimpressions. In other words there is a tremendous amount ofinterpretation going on. This emphasis on the interpretative power of the mindreminds me of that tantalisingly elusive statement of Bhante's'... The 'objective' world we perceive, with all its seas and

mountains, trees, houses and human beings, is in reality a stateof mind. Contrariwise, what is in reality a state of mind canappear as an objectively existing world which those who inhabitit or more precisely, those who have been or who are in themental state correlative to it, can actually experience andperceive.' 66 I'm not going to try to unpick that statement anyfurther; but it is clearly worth considerable contemplation.

Is all this analysis necessary? From the point of view of practising the Contemplation ofConsciousness in the Six Element Practice, the usefulness ofdeveloping the capacity to categorise our mental life in thiskind of way is that we can see more clearly the constantlystreaming momentary mental events that make up our experience ofour minds for what they are, and hence not get so deluded by theoperational concepts or ideas that we then use to label theseexperiences as if they were permanent and substantial entities inthemselves. Whilst this is easy enough to intellectuallyacknowledge, it seems quite another matter to accept in thedepths of our emotions. It is really a matter of becoming morefamiliar with our mental processes, of getting to know ourselvesvery much better than we currently do. To do this some sort ofconceptual framework is very useful; it gives us a language withwhich to describe our experience. Without this kind ofmindfulness, it is all too easy to potter along in a happyenough, yet rather hazy, foggy state, which can easily deludeitself into thinking that it is not deluded and possessive of itsown mental states. Closer acquaintance with how we go aboutbuilding up our mental life brings a much better understanding ofhow we create an impression of ourselves as being substantial andpermanent. Clearly understanding how we build up a notion of anego is an essential step in being able to let go of clinging toit as a permanent source of identity and security. This is ofcourse one of the primary aims of the Six Element Practice.

4. Manas & klistomanovijnana Clearly such an analytical process contributes considerablyto an intellectual appraisal of wrong views and right view. Butunfortunately however many objects of the mind we may analyse,and discover to be unsuitable to permanently identify with, wewill find we're still left with a irreducible sense of 'me',albeit increasingly bereft of anything to possess, butnevertheless intent on assertively defying anything which deniesits existence. Our analysing has a innate subjectivity. I'msure you have encountered this feeling of a 'me' that just willnot be analysed away. We could identify our sense of self with the constant streamof mental processes, which does have a kind of permanency to it.

But even doing this involves creating an object of the mind,which in itself will change, just as a river changes as it movesdownstream. Since the nature of the mind is to constantlychange, the 'me' associated with it necessarily changes. Forexample, no one would insist that they are still exactly the same'me' as they were twenty years ago, even though they may at timesfeel as if they are. In spite of there being a constant sense ofa 'me' passing down through those twenty years, the character ofthat 'me' has actually been continuously changing. So however much we analyse, we'll always be left feelingthere is a 'subject', so to speak, doing the analysing - ofcourse this is the very nature of vijnana. Generalising grossly,it seems that the Yogacarins attributed this tendency to aseventh level of consciousness, the manas or klistomanovijnana -the defiled mind consciousness. (Unfortunately Govindaattributes the klistomanovijnana to the 6th consciousness, themanovijnana, which is rather confusing! 67 The manas has atendency to misinterpret the six sense consciousnesses takingthem to be an objective world, in terms of space and time,existence and non-existence etc., to what it takes to be anobjective self, i.e. itself. Suzuki likens the manas to an armygeneral receiving intelligence reports at his HQ, interpretingthem and then sending out orders to be executed, the generalrarely seeing the actually fighting on the ground. 68 Inasmuchas there appears to be an externally objective world, so themanas feels there is a substantial subject in relation to it. As well as deriving a sense of identity from mistakenlyinterpreting the six sense consciousnesses, the manas alsosubstantiates its own sense of self-consciousness as emanatingfrom, what is called by the Yogacarins, the alaya-vijnana, theeighth consciousness. The term alaya is twofold in meaning. Onthe one hand it describes Absolute or Universal Consciousness orEnlightened Mind, that which is free from all dualisticconjecturing, and which is permanent. On the other hand alayameans literally a store house or treasury in which allimpressions or 'seeds' are stored; these seeds are accumulatedfrom our previous experience in this and previous lives, and cometo fruition whenever the appropriate conditions prevail. In thislatter sense the alaya has an evolving nature, which isperceptible to the manas and misinterpreted by it as the sourceof its own irreducible sense of self. It would seem that this isthe Yogacara way of accounting for our constant sense of a 'me'. The manas is another mental concept, albeit rooted in theactual deeply rooted experiences of an irreducible 'self'. It isdiagrammatically represented by Govinda as that common spacebetween two overlapping spheres, the sphere of empiricalconsciousness and the sphere of universal consciousness. 69

The common space represents the 'body' within which the universalis manifested, albeit as defiled by adventitious elements, andtherefore it represents the potential for the realisation of theuniversal. As a defiled mind the manas is a metaphor for thefundamental error that we make as discriminating beings: thesense of a permanent, self-creating self. The strange thing is that although the manas is convinced ofits own identity as a permanently enduring substantial self-conscious self, it can be so only indirectly, as yet anothermental object. The manas cannot experience itself directly as asubject! We cannot turn round and examine our sense of self-consciousness directly, or unmediated by an object because assoon as we think we are doing so, we are actually examining athought, an idea, a mental object about the self, rather thandirectly experiencing it. Since the subject of consciousness isthe subject of its own awareness, it cannot experience itselfdirectly as its own object. It is like the light in that boxtrying to see itself. There is nothing to be got hold of! It isactually quite mystifying and mysterious. A traditional imagefor this is a hand trying to grasp itself. The grasping hand isthe subject, so it cannot take hold of itself as an object.Another image is that of a torch: a torch cannot shine on itself.As the subject of light it cannot become the object of its ownillumination. All that can be got hold of is an idea, the ideaof self. That is all that the self is: an idea. So in the SixElement Practice we not only try to realise that the objects ofmind are so transitory as to be possessionless, we also try torealise there is no identity to be found anywhere in anything inthe mind which can 'possess' anything. We spent a fair bit of time earlier in the talk referring to'objects of mind' and concentrating on their momentariness.Being momentary we cannot really possess them; they are gone in aflash. We can hardly claim to control or own them in any realsense. But we are still left with this sense of a 'me' somehow,somewhere or other. What is being pointed out by use of theseanalogies of the hand and torch is that this feeling we have isreally nothing other than an idea; it's nothing more than that;it is simply another mental object. Somehow or other we'vebecome completely fascinated and deluded by this idea to thepoint that we're convinced that it is absolutely real, enduringlypermanent. It cannot have these characteristics; nothing

contingent and dependently conditioned can.

5. Absolute Mind Yogacarin or Cittamatrin thought asserts that Absolute Mindis the sole reality. There are antecedents to this teaching inthe Pali Canon. There is, for instance, the story of a monk whois keen to find where the material elements cease. He travels upto the highest Brahmas who cannot answer his question.Eventually he asks the Buddha: Where do earth, water, fire andair come to an end? Where are these four elements completelyannihilated? The Buddha answers: Not thus, Bhikkhu, is thisquestion to be put, but: Where is it that these elements find nofooting? Where is it that both name and form die out, leaving notrace behind? And the answer is: In the invisible, infinite, all-radiant consciousness of an Arahant - [vinnanam anidassanam(invisible, imperceptible), anantam sabbato pabham]; thereneither earth, nor water, neither fire nor air can find afooting. When intellection ceases they all also cease. 70 This is echoed in another statement of the Buddha's: 'thereexists that condition wherein there is neither earth, nor water,nor fire nor air; wherein is neither sphere of infinite space ...neither this world, nor any other world, neither sun nor moon.There I declare is no coming to birth, thither is no going fromlife; there is no arising. It is not something fixed, it movesnot on, it is not based on anything. That indeed is the end ofIll.' 71 . The implication of Yogacarin doctrine is that only ideas, orperceptions, exist (vijnaptimatra); a corollary is that theexistence of matter is denied. Sangharakshita explains thatYogacarin thought does not deny 'the existence of sensiblequalities, ... but of an independent material substratum inwhich they are supposed to inhere. A flower, ... for example ismerely the sum total of certain visual, olfactory, and tactilesensations; it is not a lump of matter which possesses thesesensations as its attributes. Matter is an abstraction, a mereword. ... When we realise that the so-called objective universeexists nowhere save in our own mind, all attachment to it will bedestroyed, and with the destruction of that attachment liberationwill be attained.' 72 This is not crude solipsism, saying thateverything is just a figment of our imagination; it is notsolipsism because the notion of a personal mind is also denied:there is no permanent self to have a mind with which tofantasise. This means that, whilst we have 'inward' and 'outwardperceiving' aspects to our perceptual experience, correspondingrespectively to what we label as mind and matter, our experienceis just simply all there is, the one single flow of experience,nothing more or less. Consciousness is all that there really is, 'luminous and

undefiled by adventitious defilements' 73 ; an 'intrinsic nakedawareness' unobscured by 'thought-coverings'. The experience ofthe flow of purified consciousness is what the final stage of theContemplation of the Six Elements asks us to rest in. Sincethere is only experience, we cannot ever contact anything outsideexperience. We impose upon our experience of consciousness thesecondary activities of our interpretation of sense-impressionswithin terms such as a time-space framework, or in terms of'existing' as opposed to 'not-existing' etc. We are asked torecognise this secondary activity for what it is and just let itflow on. We can never prove that we have contacted anythingoutside our experience because if we think we have done so, bydefinition it has to be within our experience. It is not that our perception of the mahabhutas is merefantasy, it is just that consciousness in its innate purity doesnot apprehend reality in such terms or make itself known toitself as such. Our process of objectification, our desire tomake manifest, or intellection as the translator has it, is thebasis for our apprehension of the mahabhutas. If we can let goof this then we can rest in 'something else'. That there is something else which has a very definitepositive content is assented to by the Buddha and echoed byPadmasambhava in this quote: ' ...when one seeks one's mind inits true state, it is found to be quite intelligible, althoughinvisible. In its true state, mind is naked, immaculate; notmade of anything, being of the Voidness; clear, vacuous, withoutduality, transparent; timeless, uncompounded, unimpeded,colourless; not realisable as a separate thing, but as the unityof all things, yet not composed of them; of one taste andtranscendent over all differentiation. ... Mind being, as itis, of this nature, and thus unknowable, how can one assert thatit is created.' 74

Dhatuvibanga Sutta But how do we set about getting to actually perceiveAbsolute Mind? 'Just do it!'? It surely must be the work ofregular steps: by means of the Six Element Practice weprogressively dis-identify from, at first, the apparently cruderobjects of 'matter', concluding with the subtler aspects ofconsciousness. The progressive dis-identification is drawn outby the Buddha in his discourse on the Analysis of Elements, orDhatuvibanga sutta of the Majjhima Nikaya (Sutta 140) 75 , asource for the Six Element Practice in the Pali Canon. We'llspend this section of the talk exploring some of the implicationsof the comments with which the Buddha presents the practice. The Buddha, before presenting the analysis of the fourmahabhutas and akasha, in the straight-forward fashion that we dowhen first introduced to the practice, draws our attention to the

consequences of each variety of consciousness being bound up withits respective sense-object. He says that each is a cause foreither delight, distress or equanimity (i.e. feeling - vedana).He likens this to heat and light arising from the contact andfriction of two sticks being rubbed together. This reminds me ofthe Buddha's Fire Sermon, in which he says, 'the whole world isburning. Burning with what? It is burning with the fire ofcraving, and neurotic desire. It is burning with the fire ofanger, hatred and aggression. It is burning with the fire ofignorance, delusion, bewilderment and lack of awareness.' And inanother sutta of the Majjhima Nikaya 76 when exploring the sametopic of the Six Elements, the Buddha talks of destroying, givingup and casting out the grasping after and hankering after the SixElements; or, as another translation (Evans) has it, giving upour 'compulsion, predilection, and innate bias' towards the SixElements. In this way, the Buddha sets the Six Element practicewithin the context of describing our usual state of mind: we arecaught up with, enamoured, entranced, fascinated, excited by andentangled with each of the different categories of sense-consciousness, which in their own way express the six greatelementary qualities of perception. At each stage of the Six Element practice we work againstour fascination and entanglement with each of the different,apparently objective, aspects of our perceptual experience. Oneway we can do this is to see the transitory and henceinsubstantial nature of each of the Elements: that each isconstantly flowing like a stream both into and out of and throughour experience in a way over which we have little control.Coming to realise the impermanence of that which we are usuallyso bound up with has the tendency to undermine our dependence andfeelings of possessiveness. Instead of giving way to theseperceptions, we let them flow by us; whilst maintaining a senseof detachment from them, we experience them for what they are. I envisage this process as if we are looking at life in avery dirty mirror; we get fascinated and caught up with what weimagine we see there; what we see is more what is on the surfaceof the mirror than what the mirror is actually reflecting, whichis distorted by the dirt on its surface. And in seeing what wesee, which has as much to do with what we want to see as withwhat we actually see, we convince ourselves that there issomething solid, substantial and enduring which we want topossess. In the course of our reflections in the Six Elementpractice we, so to speak, clean the mirror of our minds, both ofthe dirt, by seeing the dirt for what it is, and of ourpredilection to want to make the dirt into something which itisn't, i.e. to seek permanent, substantial happiness in thatwhich is innately impermanent, insubstantial and incapable ofmaking us permanently happy. In other words, we purify our heart

of all that which distorts how we see and prevents us from moreclearly appreciating the richness and beauty of life. As Blakesaid: 'If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything wouldappear to man as it is, infinite.' The Buddha makes a very similar point in the Dhatuvibangasutta, when, after having gone through the contemplations of theElements Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Space, he elucidates thecontemplation of Consciousness. He says that Consciousness bythis stage, through turning away from each of the mahabhutas andthen akasha, purges itself of each of them, and so remains pureand cleansed. He says it is as if the two rubbing sticks haveceased to have contact. The Buddha goes on to say that in this way just equanimityremains, pure and cleansed, soft, workable and bright. He likensthis equanimity to a skilled goldsmith who 'after preparing afurnace, ignites a smelting pot, and seizing the pure metal withforceps, places it in the smelting pot. From time to time hemight blow on it, might sprinkle it with water, might lookcarefully at it. That pure metal - blown, purified, cleansed andremoved free from dross is soft, workable, and bright forwhatever kind of ornament, ring, earring, necklace or goldengarland that is desired.' 77 The Buddha then goes on to say that, because of thisequanimity (which clearly is the upekkha of the fourth dhyana),there arises the knowledge that if we chose to focus on one ofthe so-called 'objects' of the fourth dhyana, for example, theinfinity of space, or the infinity of consciousness, that thisequanimity will stand supported and nourished for a long time.But then the Buddha says that 'one comprehends: If I focus thisequanimity on levels of experience such as these, that issomething contrived. (sankhatam i.e. confected - and hence asan karmic act will lead to consequences)' So one does not prepareor plan for existence or separation from existence. Notpreparing or planning thus one clings to nothing in the world.Not clinging one is untormented, and from that one comes ofoneself to final nibbana.'78 We can see that from the Buddha's perspective, when wefollow through the sequential practice of this last stage of theContemplation of Consciousness, it naturally emerges into finalcomplete liberation. The Buddha continues, '... one knows that,if one experiences a pleasant, painful or neutral feeling, it istransient, not to be held onto, not to be rejoiced at.Experiencing a feeling limited by the body or bounded by thelifespan, one comprehends it as such. One knows that, on thebreaking-up of the body at the end of one's lifespan, allenjoyable experiences here will become cool. Monk, as an oil-lamp burns because of the oil and the wick, but goes out fromtheir consumption, given no replenishment - so it is with such

worldly experiences.'79 It seems to me that the implication isquite clear: we become fascinated and bound up with the fiveElements because we mistakenly anticipate enjoyment from them. The Buddha then concludes his discourse by saying: '...Where there is steadfastness [perhaps a translation of upekkha?]the flow of opinion does not persist and thereby the sage is saidto be calmed. But what is the basis for saying this? "I am. Iam this. I shall be. I shall not be. I shall have form. Ishall be formless. I shall have perception. I shall not haveperception. I neither shall nor shall not have perception." Allsuch are opinions. Opinions, monk, is an illness, an abscess, abarb. From the surmounting of all opinions the sage is said tobe calmed. Indeed the sage who is calmed is not born, does notage, is not agitated, desires nothing ...' 80 Although it is notexplicit, the implication is that the conceit of an 'I' and theopinionatedness which goes with it is bound up intimately withour desire for the mahabhutas themselves. In seeing how baselessthe mahabhutas are, we cut away the ground upon which our egosstand and hence the ground upon which we stand as conditionedbeings. Something of this approach is echoed in Padmasambhava'swords as recorded in The Self-liberation through Seeing withNaked Awareness. 81 'Now, when you are introduced (to your own intrinsicawareness), the method for entering into it involves threeconsiderations: Thoughts in the past are clear and empty andleave no traces behind. Thoughts in the future are fresh andunconditioned by anything. And in the present moment, when (yourmind) remains in its own condition without constructing anything,awareness at that moment in itself is quite ordinary. And whenyou look into yourself in this way nakedly (without anydiscursive thoughts), since there is only the pure observing,there will be found a lucid clarity without anyone being therewho is the observer; only a naked manifest awareness is present.(This awareness) is empty and immaculately pure, not beingcreated by anything whatsoever. It is authentic andunadulterated, without any duality of clarity and emptiness. Itis not permanent and yet it is not created by anything. However,it is not a mere nothingness or something annihilated because itis lucid and present. It does not exist as a single entitybecause it is present and clear in terms of being many. (On theother hand) it is not created as a multiplicity of things becauseit is inseparable and of a single flavour. This inherent self-awareness does not derive from anything outside itself. This isthe real introduction to the actual condition of things. It is certain that the nature of mind is empty and withoutany foundation whatsoever. Your own mind is insubstantial likethe empty sky. You should look at your own mind to see whether

it is like that or not. Being without any views that decisivelydecides that it is empty, it is certain that self-originatedprimal awareness has been clear (and luminous) from the verybeginning, like the heart of the sun, which is itself self-originated. You should look at your own mind to see whether itis like that or not. It is certain that this primal awareness orgnosis, which is one's intrinsic awareness, is unceasing, likethe main channel of a river that flows unceasingly. You shouldlook at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not. Itis certain that the diversity of movements arising (in the mind)are not apprehensible by memories, they are like insubstantialbreezes that move through the atmosphere. You should look atyour own mind to see whether it is like that or not. It certainthat whatever appearances occur, all of them are self-manifested,like the images in a mirror being self-manifestations that simplyappear. You should look at your own minds to see whether it islike that or not. It is certain that all of the diversecharacteristics of things are liberated into their own condition,like clouds in the atmosphere that are self-originated and self-liberated. You should look at your own mind to see whether it islike that or not.'

7. Toward spiritual rebirth The Six Element practice is our means of practising thethird great stage of spiritual life: spiritual death. Spiritualdeath gives way to spiritual rebirth. This is the context withinwhich we practice. It's as if we cannot fully rest in the state of illuminated,radiant, pure consciousness without exploring some sort of form.This is how I see our sadhana practices: as explorations of thepurer forms or expressions of purified Consciousness. It's as ifthe last stage of the Six Element practice and the sadhanapractice go hand in hand, each unfolding into the other: beingsymbolised by the diaphanous, translucent forms of the yidamemerging out of the radiant blue sky and then dissolving backinto it. Our yidam is our new self - with whom we set out toidentify with, to Go for Refuge to, having Gone Forth from ourold identity as felt in the experiences of the mahabhutas andElement Space in our material bodies. The Six Element practice does not exhort us to abandonrational, conceptual analysis; in fact, our practice embracesthese tools, using them to their limits. We recognise theprovisionality of the models and paradigms derived thereby. Atthe same time we begin to sense the metaphorical nature oflanguage which points to a meaning and significance beyond theliteral content. New paradigms are sensed through the agency ofimages. These new paradigms are essentially those of theliberated Imagination: and they represent I suggest the inception

of the next great stage of Bhante's path of meditation: spiritualrebirth. One particularly useful paradigm is that of the mandala ofthe five Jinas: this image represents both the totality ofenlightened purity of Mind, whilst corresponding in itsparticular aspects to the different attributes of the defiledmind. In this way the experience of the eighth Consciousness ofrelative alaya is revealed in its essential purity as the Mirror-like Wisdom of Akshobya - the purified mahabhuta of Water; theexperience of the seventh consciousness of the manas is revealedin its essential purity as the Wisdom of Equality ofRatnasambhava - the purified mahabhuta Earth; the sixthconsciousness manovijnana is revealed in its essential purity asthe All-distinguishing Wisdom of Amitabha - the purifiedmahabhuta Fire; and the five sense consciousnesses are revealedin their essential purity as the All-Performing Wisdom ofAmoghasiddhi - the purified mahabhuta of Air. 82 It's as if ourgrasping natures misinterpret and try to appropriate the realityof things which is there all the time to be appreciated. If wecan learn to let go of our deeply-rooted habit of limiting ourperceptions to an ego-orientated, selfish preoccupation, wellwe'll discover that an unlimited, infinite, radiant reality hasbeen there all the time shining in its essential purity andbeauty. And we'll burst out laughing! This is what I takeVajrasattva to be doing in his one hundred syllable mantra: HA!HA! HA! HA! HOH! This new paradigm is that of Wisdom i.e. jnana or prajnawhich can be translated as analytical aesthetic appreciation.83This new paradigm is one of beauty, a beauty which is sobeautiful that it cannot be possessed, used or controlled; it canbe only be appreciated for what it is. How is this turning aboutin the deepest seat of consciousness (paravrtti) or actualtransformation of the analytical mode of consciousness to thisnew paradigm to be cultivated? By going forth from depending on,and looking for security in, and grasping after in our oldutilitarian manner the rationalised categorisations of vijnana,which we usually perceive primarily in relation to the selfishappropriative preoccupations of 'me' and 'mine', and insteadGoing for Refuge to an ever fresh open dimension of becoming,which has the impartial, universalising perspective of metta. It may seem strange to have apparently gone full circle: Iseem to be saying that the Six Element practice starts out withthe cultivation of metta, and apparently ends up with that. WhatI mean is that the Six Element practice takes our metta practiceto new heights. We need to remember that the Six Elementpractice is about cleaning the doors of our perceptions. Wisdomis not cold and detached, but burns with warmth of feeling joy,delight and appreciation of beauty in the infinite net of the

mutual interpenetration of all things. And from that flows thespontaneity, freedom, and creativity of unlimited, luminous, andradiant consciousness.

Appendix 1.

THE CONTEMPLATION OF THE SIX ELEMENTS basic instructions Preparation: a) in everyday life give sustained attention to a variety of personal experiences of the particular Element(s). b) before starting the Contemplation, generate strong metta and positive emotions.

main practice: 1. Experience as vividly and imaginatively as possible the Element in your bodily experience: 'In my body is this Element 'X', typically including ...' 2. Recognise as colourfully and richly as possible the same Element in the external world. Recognise that your experience of the Element within your bodily experience and in the external world are essentially the same: 'In the external world this Element takes a variety of different typical forms, and this is, for example, ... how I experience them. The Element in my body has the same characteristics as the Element outside it.' 3. Recognise that the Element in your body comes from the Element outside it: 'I experience the Element in my body coming from the Element outside it in these various ways: ...' 4. Recognise that the Element in your body is constantly returning to the Element outside it: 'I experience the Element in my body constantly returning to the Element outside it in these various ways: ...' 5. Recognise that when you die the Element in the body will finally go back to the Element in the outside world, never to return: 'When I die the Element in my body will finally return to the Element in the world outside it.' 6. Recognise that there is nothing in your experience of the Element with which you can permanently identify and therefore you can have no

permanent control over or ownership of the Element: "There is nothing in this Element with which I can permanently identify, and therefore call 'I' or 'me'; neither can I really say that I possess it or ultimately control it; is not fundamentally 'mine'. I have only temporarily borrowed this Element; though constantly coming and going within my experience, it is not to be relied on for security, as a safe Refuge, so I let go of my preoccupation with it and possessiveness towards it. I give up my sense of it belonging to me, of my feeling that it is essentially 'me'." 7. Relax, confidently enjoying and appreciating your experience of the Element as it comes and goes; letting go of it, giving it up, and becoming free of attachment to it Appendix 2. THE CONTEMPLATION OF THE SIX ELEMENTS long lead through84Preparation:a) in everyday life give sustained attention to a variety ofpersonal experiences of the particular Element(s).b) before starting the Contemplation, generate strong metta andpositive emotions.

Main practice:Bell: Contemplation of the Element Earth: now relaxing intofeelings of metta

1. Take your attention to the sensations associated withsitting, the contact of your body with your meditation seat andmat, your clothes; your body is resisted by the seat and theground beneath it, the seat is resisted by your body. Your bodyis solid, it has substance, it has weight, firmness, rigidity,resistance; it feels impenetrable - you can feel this now througha number of your different senses, and you can bring to mindsimilar experiences. This is the experience of the mahabhuta ofEarth, the Earth Element in your body. Feel your spine rising upwards out of our pelvic bones,keeping you upright, giving you a feeling of uprightness,solidity, firmness, strength. This is the Earth Element. Feelall the associated sensations: the shoulders, neck, and head,arms resting on your legs; all this is Earth Element in the body;feel the sensation of solidity. Feel the Earth Element in thebody, in the form of skin and then bones and muscles, and in allthe different parts of your body: your skeleton: in your pelvis,in your spine and chest, in your fingers, in your feet, in yourlegs and arms and neck and in your head: in your jaws, your

teeth, tongue. Bring to mind how it feels to touch your nails,your hair, to feel the movement of your muscles, and any otherpart of your body: your eyes, your nose, your ears, your lips,all with their solid Earth Element. They all have their owncharacteristic shape, texture, and colour, all being expressionsin their own different ways of this Earth Element. Feeling theEarth Element within your body in its many different forms, bringto mind as vividly as possible this Earth Element in your body. 2. This Earth Element you experience in your body isfundamentally the same as the Earth Element outside your body.The solidity, resistance, rigidity and substance is the same asin the meditation seat you're sitting on, and in the marbleflagstones on the ground underneath us. This Earth Element is inthe concrete blocks and the tiles of the shrine room; it is inthe rocks, stones, earth, soil, clay, limestone, dust, mountains,trees, bushes, leaves, wood, metal, glass, houses, machines,other living organisms; all Earth Element. Experience the EarthElement all around you, realise it is the same as the EarthElement in you. 3. The Earth Element in you has come from the Earth Elementoutside you. You have, as it were, borrowed it for a short time.The Earth Element you experience in your body was built up fromthe food you have eaten. You eat the Earth Element in your foodin your meals. You break it up with your teeth, you chew it, andswallow it, you can feel it being digested in your stomach.Every bit of the Earth Element in us comes from the Earth Elementoutside of us. You didn't even provide the Earth Element you hadat birth, even then your body was formed and built up from theconjunction of your parents' sperm and ovum and nurtured in yourmother's womb. 4. All the time you are giving the Earth Element in yourbody back to the Earth Element outside you: when you excrete,your skin is continually falling off, when you cut hair andnails. So the Earth Element is coming into and going throughyour body in a flowing stream - that is what your body is! - acontinuous stream of flowing Earth Element. There is no singleparticle of Earth Element that is with you throughout your life. 5. One day when you have died, when your body is crematedor placed in the ground to rot, the Earth Element in your bodywill return completely to the Earth Element outside you. Youwill, so to speak, 'give it back' for the last time. You will nolonger need to borrow the Earth Element. 6. Your experience of the Earth Element in your body and inthe external world is one of a constant flowing from one form tothe next, from one expression to another; each of yourexperiences of the Earth Element arises in dependence on aninfinite network of supporting conditions and causal connections,some more obvious and immediate than others. And in your

experience of this Earth Element, in spite of its solidity,substance, and firmness, there is nothing there to be got hold ofas permanently unchanging and enduringly substantial. This EarthElement is not an independent 'thing'; you cannot separate itout; it is not isolatable; it is constantly flowing through yourbody. It does not produce itself; it is not the source of itsown life and force. If you look very carefully, there is nothingin your experience of the Earth Element, either within you or inthe outside world, with which you can permanently identify, inwhich you can find a 'me', or in which you can find a permanentlyenduring 'self', saying that this or that part of the EarthElement is essentially me, or 'I'. You have not created the Earth Element; you are onlyborrowing it for a time; there is nothing in the Earth Elementwhich finally belongs to you, which you can ultimately possessand control, which you can call 'mine'. So you cannot own theEarth Element, you can only borrow it and use it temporarily inyour body, before you inevitably have to give it back to theEarth Element outside you. 7. You cannot rely on this Earth Element; you cannotultimately depend on it; there is no permanent security to befound in it; it is not a safe refuge. To the extent you becomeenamoured with it, bound up with it, entranced by it, entangledwith it, seek security and refuge and permanency in the EarthElement, you cause yourself and others pain. Give up yourpreoccupation with the Earth Element, give up yearning for it,craving and grasping it, give up your attempts to appropriate it,to hold on to it, free yourself of your attachment to the EarthElement, be free of any feeling of identity with it, let go ofwanting to possess and have control over it. And instead restconfidently and contentedly enjoying having let go, enjoying anew freer, easier way of relating to the Earth Element, simplyappreciating the flow of the Earth Element within your experienceof yourself and the outside world.

Bell. Secondly, the contemplation of the Element Water. 1. Take your attention to the sensations associated withthe body. Experience the saliva in your mouth, feel the pulse ofblood flowing through your arteries and veins. And bring to mindall the different kinds of bodily fluids that you experience inyour body: your urine, sweat, snot, tears, digestive juices,mucus, semen, blood and so forth, all flowing, oozing, everythingliquid, and watery that moves downwards, dribbles, splashes,drips or forms puddles, each moving in their characteristic way.This is your experience of the Element Water in your body. Youfeel this Element Water in your skin, in its softness andpliability, and the same in the muscles and organs of the body.

2. This Water Element you experience in your body isfundamentally just the same as the Water Element outside yourbody. The same liquidness, fluidity, motility, undulation,softness is there in the water you wash in, or in the drinks youdrink. You can see the Water Element in the external world allaround you: in the springs, in the rain, in the clouds, and mist,the streams, the rivers, the lakes, seas and oceans; it's in allthe plants, the trees, their leaves, and flowers, and in theanimals and birds you see. It's there in all the differentliquids we encounter: oil, paint, petrol, shampoo. Just see theWater Element all around you, and realise it is the same as theWater Element in you. 3. The Water Element in you has come from the Water Elementoutside you. You have, as it were, borrowed it for a short time.The Water Element you experience in your body was built up fromthe food you have eaten, and the drinks you have drunk. You areborrowing the Water Element all the time. You eat and drink theWater Element in your meals every day, if you don't you quicklyfeel very sick, as when you dehydrate. You can feel the WaterElement in your mouth as you break your food up with your teeth,as you chew it, and swallow it, you can feel it passing throughyour stomach. Every bit of the Water Element in you has comefrom the Water Element outside of you. You didn't even providethe Water Element you had at birth, even then your body wasformed and built up from the conjunction of your parents' spermand ovum, and nurtured in your mother's womb. 4. All the time you are giving the Water Element in yourbody back to the Water Element outside you, in your faeces, inyour urine, when you sweat, you even breathe it out in yourbreath, and when you spit, or blow your nose, and when you cry.The Water Element is coming and going through your body in aflowing stream - that's what your body is! There is no singleparticle of Water Element that is with you throughout your life. 5. One day when you die, when your body is cremated orplaced in the ground to rot, the Water Element in your body willreturn completely to the Water Element outside you. You will, soto speak, 'give it back' for the last time. You no longer needto borrow the Water Element. 6. Your experience of the Water Element in your body and inthe external world is of a constant flowing from one liquid formto the next, from one expression to another; each of yourexperiences of the Water Element arises in dependence on aninfinite network of supporting conditions and causal connections,some more obvious and immediate than others. In your experienceof this Water Element, there is nothing there to be got hold ofas permanently unchanging and enduringly substantial. This WaterElement is not an independent 'thing'; you cannot separate itout; it is not isolatable; it is constantly flowing through your

body. It does not produce itself, it is not the source of itsown life and force. And if you look very carefully there isnothing in your experience of the Water Element, either withinyou or in the outside world, with which you can permanentlyidentify, in which you can find a 'me', or in which you can finda permanently enduring 'self', saying that this or that part ofthe Water Element is essentially me, or 'I'. You have not created the Water Element; you only borrow itfor a time, use it temporarily, before you inevitably let go ofit and let it flow back to the Water Element outside you. Thereis nothing in the Water Element which finally belongs to you,which you can ultimately possess and control, which you can call'mine'. You cannot own the Water Element, you can only borrow itand use it temporarily in your body, before you inevitably haveto give it back to the Water Element outside you. 7. You cannot rely on this Water Element; you cannotultimately depend on it; there is no permanent security to befound in it; it is not a safe refuge. To the extent you becomeenamoured with it, bound up with it, entranced by it, entangledwith it, seek security and refuge and permanency in the WaterElement, you cause yourself and others pain. Give up yourpreoccupation with the Water Element, give up yearning for it,craving and grasping it, give up your attempts to appropriate it,to hold on to it, free yourself of your attachment to the WaterElement, be free of any feeling of identity with it, let go ofwanting to possess and have control over it. And instead restconfidently and contentedly enjoying having let go, enjoying anew freer, easier way of relating to the Water Element, simplyappreciating the flow of the Water Element within your experienceof yourself and the outside world.

Bell. Thirdly, Contemplation of the Element Fire 1. Take you attention the experience of heat and cold inyour body, notice how different parts of your body feel warmerand cooler. Experience the warmth of your blood and in yourbreath and in your stomach. Experience the sensations of energyand vitality in different parts of your body: in your differentmuscles. Bring to mind the experience of your own body heat whenyou are wearing different sorts of clothes, and when you are inbed. All this is your experience of the Fire Element in yourbody. You are in fact very sensitive to the Fire Element in yourbody. 2. Your experience of the Fire Element in your body isfundamentally the same as the Fire Element in the outside world.You experience heat in the general temperature outside, whetherit is a cold chilly morning or a baking hot afternoon; youexperience the Element Fire first and foremost from the sun, thegreat source of the Fire Element in the world, a great orb of

radiant Fire Energy, which gives life and sustenance directly orindirectly to all that lives. You experience it with heatingsystems, a simple wood or coal fire, or gas or oil-burningcentral heating system. You can see the evidence of the FireElement in great natural events such as forest fires, volcanoes,hot springs, and its absence in snow and ice, frozen glaciers,icebergs, frozen sea etc. This Fire Element is made use of byall living beings from simple photosynthesising algae to complexcarnivores; it is being successively built up and dissipated inchains of interdependent life forms. 3. The Fire Element in your body comes from the FireElement outside the body. You take it in from your food, canfeel it being released in the warmth of your stomach, and in theexpenditure of energy when you move about. You constantly borrowthe Fire Element from the external world. You use this Elementin creating and maintaining your body, and keeping it warm. Youare so dependent on the Fire Element, you have to have just theright amount of Fire Element: too much and you're too hot; toolittle and you're too cold; if you are too hot or cold you caneasily die. So all the time you're working to keep the FireElement in your body, bringing it in in food; maintaining abalance between trying to stop it escape and getting rid of it bywearing the right sort of clothes, by insulating your house. 4. We are constantly giving the Fire Element back to theFire Element in the world around us. The Fire Element isescaping from us all the time. As quickly as you take it in, youuse up the Fire Element, it takes a lot of energy even to digestthe food you eat. And then you radiate it out - all the timeyou're giving off heat. So there's not one bit of the FireElement which remains with you all the time. 5. When you've died, the Fire Element will just pass out ofyour body as it grows colder and colder. And when your body isput in the ground to rot or is cremated, you will no longer needto borrow the Fire Element; you will finally give the FireElement back, so to speak, for the last time. It will returncompletely to the Fire Element in the outside world. 6. Your experience of the Fire Element in your body and inthe external world is of constant change, a constant flow of oneform to the next, from one expression to another; each of yourexperiences of the Fire Element arises in dependence on aninfinite network of supporting conditions and causal connections,some more obvious and immediate than of the others. In yourexperience of this Fire Element, there is nothing there to be gothold of as permanently unchanging and enduringly substantial.This Fire Element is not an independent 'thing'; you cannotseparate it out; it is not isolatable; it is constantly flowingthrough your body. It does not produce itself, it is not thesource of its own life and force. If you look very carefully

there is nothing in your experience of the Fire Element, eitherwithin you or in the outside world, with which you canpermanently identify, in which you can find a 'me', or in whichyou can find a permanently enduring 'self', saying that this orthat part of the Fire Element is essentially me, or 'I'. You have not created the Fire Element; you are onlyborrowing it for a time, using it temporarily, before youinevitably let go of it and let it flow back to the Fire Elementoutside you. There is nothing in the Fire Element which finallybelongs to you, which you can ultimately possess and control,which you can call 'mine'. You cannot own the Fire Element, youcan only borrow it and use it temporarily in your body, beforeyou inevitably have to give it back to the Fire Element outsideyou. 7. You cannot rely on this Fire Element; you cannotultimately depend on it; there is no permanent security to befound in it; it is not a safe refuge. To the extent you becomeenamoured with it, bound up with it, entranced by it, entangledwith it, seek security and refuge and permanency in the FireElement, you cause yourself and others pain. Give up yourpreoccupation with the Fire Element, give up yearning after it,craving and grasping it, give up your attempts to appropriate it,to hold on to it, free yourself of your attachment to the FireElement, be free of any feeling of identity with it, let go ofwanting to possess and have control over it. And instead restconfidently and contentedly enjoying having let go, enjoying anew freer, easier way of relating to the Fire Element, simplyappreciating the flow of the Fire Element within your experienceof yourself and the outside world.

Bell. Fourthly, Contemplation of the Element Air 1/2. Take your attention to the sensation of air passing inand out of your body, coming in through your nostrils, down theback of your throat, into your lungs, the sensation of your chestand diaphragm opening and expanding. Experience the breath as itcomes and goes. This is the experience of the Element Air inyour body. And it is fundamentally the same as your experienceof the Element Air outside the body. This Element we call Air ischaracterised by lightness, transparency, vibration, multi-directional movement, gaseousness in the ways that we experienceit in the wind, and hear it's passage over the ground: either asin soft gentle breeze or a howling gale. We can see and hear theElement Air moving through the trees and bushes. We see itseffects on clouds in the sky, or when it whisks up dust and deadleaves off the ground. We see it moving across the face of wateron rivers, lakes, on the sea, scurrying along city streetsblowing dust and litter about. It is sometimes cold; very cold;and sometimes hot; sometimes it carries with it fragrances, as

from incense or the fumes of petrol. 3-5. You take air in, and give it back, every few seconds acomplete cycle. You take it from the atmosphere around you, andgive it back. You are constantly borrowing the Element Air, andthen giving it back to the Air Element in the external world.You use this Air Element constantly in your blood as itcirculates around the body. If you didn't do this you would die.Just as one of your first acts in this world in being born was tobreathe in, so your last act in dying will be to breathe out.One day you shall breathe in and breathe out one last raspingbreath, and not breathe in again. One day, when you are dying,you will give up borrowing this Air Element, you will no longerneed to use this Element Air. 6. Your experience of the Air Element in your body and inthe external world is of a constant flow; there's nothing thereto be got hold of, to hold onto; as soon as you've breathed in,you have to breathe out, and this goes on day and night, evenwhen you're asleep. In your experience of this Air Element,there is nothing there to be got hold of as permanentlyunchanging and enduringly substantial. This Air Element is notan independent 'thing'; you cannot separate it out; it is notisolatable; it is constantly flowing through your body. There isnothing in your experience of the Air Element that suggests thatit is the source of its own life and force. If you look verycarefully there is nothing in your experience of the Air Element,either within you or in the outside world, with which can youpermanently identify, in which you can find a 'me', or in whichyou can find a permanently enduring 'self', saying that this orthat part of the Air Element is essentially me, or 'I'. You have not created the Air Element; you are only borrowingit for a time, using it temporarily, before you inevitably let goof it and let it flow back to the Air Element outside you. Thereis nothing in the Air Element which finally belongs to you, whichyou can ultimately possess and control, which you can call'mine'. You cannot own the Air Element, you can only borrow itand use it temporarily in your body, before you inevitably haveto give it back to the Air Element outside you. 7. In spite of feeling so very bound up with breathing inthis Air Element, it is impersonal; impersonal as the wind whichblows where it lists. So experience this Air element coming andgoing, without attachment, without identification: "it's not 'I',not 'me', not 'mine'". Rest happily appreciating, and enjoyingthe coming and going of the Air Element, free of entanglementwith it.

Bell. Fifthly, Contemplation of the Element Space 1. Take your attention to your sense of yourself sittinghere in this shrine room. You have a sense of where you are in

space, at what place or point, or location you are, and, howbeing in this place, how you are related to other things andpeople in the shrine room. You experience the world around youfrom this vantage point: this is your point of view. You evenhave a sense of where the shrine room is in relation to the restof the retreat centre, in relation to the valley, and perhaps avague sense of where the valley is in relation to the rest ofSpain and Europe. Space goes on further still into the skies,and beyond this planet, into the solar system, the galaxy, ourUniverse. Become aware of your sense of your body as a whole, it'sshape, and size. And it's immediate relationship to that withwhich it is in contact: your sitting cushions, your clothes asthey hang on your body. You have a sense of where you stop andthe rest of the world starts, where the rest of the world stopsand you start. You have a sense of your boundary, your space.This is your experience of the Element Space in your body. ThisElement Space contains the other four Elements Earth, Water, Fireand Air which you experience in your body. In borrowing thesefour Elements in making up your body you also take up a verydefinite space, with a specific shape and size to it, a shape andsize specific to you. Even simply sitting here you are borrowinga particular space from the external Element Space in which tosit. This is the experience of the Element Space in your body.And generally speaking you like this experience, it feelscomfortable, it feels right, it suits you, you're used to it, youfeel in control of it, you even feel quite attached to it. 2. In the same way other objects in the world around us usethe Element Space. Bring to mind your room: your bed, yourtreasured possessions: your books, papers, clothes, pictures; allof them use the other Elements in various combinations and forms,necessarily taking up a certain space with definite shapes andsizes; they all have a relation in space to you and to oneanother. This is your experience of the Element Space in theexternal world. You like to have these different things in yourroom arranged around you in a certain way. You like them to takeup certain spaces; you're actually quite attached to them beingthe way that they are; many of them you've put in certain spacesbecause you like it that way. And you like to go to certainspaces and occupy them; you may like your place in the shrineroom; perhaps you have a favourite spot in the valley. And youlike some things to be closer to you and some things furtheraway. You even like some people to be closer to you and othersfurther away. If some people get too close to you, you feelcrowded out, that your space has been invaded, been infringed.Generally speaking you like to be in control of the spaces thatyou use, you quite attached to being in control of what you thinkof as your space. And so you behave in such a way as to go to

spaces where you can be the boss. 3-5. Reflect on how you cannot be in two spaces at once.As you move from one space to the next, so you leave the old onebehind. So in this simple way just moving about all the time youare borrowing, usingthe Element Space. But even if you didn'tmove about you'd still be borrowing the Element Space from theworld outside simply by virtue of having a physical body; yourbody necessarily takes up space. But one day when you are dead,and your body is being cremated or is rotting in the ground, yourbody will no longer be using this Element of Space. You willhave given up borrowing it for the last time. 6. When the Elements of Earth, Water, Fire and Air havecompletely returned to the Elements in the outside world, youwon't occupy a space any longer. Your space will have gonecompletely. And all your familiar spaces that you love so much:your room, your bed, your favourite chair, your books andpossession will be used by other people. If you look carefullyyou'll realise that your experience of the Space Element both inyour body and in the external world is a constant change, aconstant flow of one form into the next, from one expression toanother; each of your experiences of the Space Element arises independence on an infinite network of supporting conditions andcausal connections, some more obvious and immediate than others.And in your experience of this Space Element, there is nothingthere to be got hold of as permanently unchanging and enduringlysubstantial. This Space Element is not an independent 'thing';you cannot separate it out; it is not isolatable; it isconstantly flowing through your body. It does not produceitself, it is not the source of its own life and force. If youlook very carefully there is nothing in your experience of theSpace Element, either within you or in the outside world, withwhich can permanently identify, in which you can find a 'me', orin which you can find a permanently enduring 'self', saying thatthis or that part of the Space Element is essentially me, or 'I'. You have not created the Space Element; you are onlyborrowing it for a time, using it very temporarily andprovisionally, before you inevitably let go of it and let it flowback to the Space Element outside you. There is nothing in theSpace Element which finally belongs to you, which you canultimately possess, control, parcel up and which you can call'mine'. You cannot own the Space Element, you can only borrow itand use it temporarily in your body, before you inevitably haveto give it back to the Space Element outside you. 7. You cannot rely on this Space Element; you cannotultimately depend on it; there is no permanent security to befound in it; it is not a safe refuge. To the extent you becomeenamoured with it, bound up with it, entranced by it, entangledwith, seek security and refuge and permanency in the Earth

Element, you cause yourself and others pain. Give up yourpreoccupation with the Space Element, give up yearning for it,craving and grasping it, give up your attempts to appropriate it,to hold on to it, free yourself of your attachment to the SpaceElement, be free of any feeling of identity with it, let go ofwanting to possess and have control over it. Now reflect what will happen to your experience of theElement Space when you are no longer preoccupied with theElements of Earth, Water, Fire and Air through the six doors ofthe senses, eye, ear, nose, tongue, skin and ordinary mind.Consider what happens when you meditate deeply and enter thedhyanas, and progress into the deeper dhyanas. You are no longerpreoccupied with these four Elements in the usual way; and youenter a different kind of space - a space which doesn't containthe usual kind of forms and combinations of the other FourElements; a space made of light, shining with light, a space inwhich every point is as bright and important as the next. If youexplore this space you'll find that it is infinite, that itspreads infinitely in all directions and that everywhere it isequally bright and luminous. In its essential nature it is notconditioned, it is not limited by association with the other FourElements. Space is just space, completely open, unlimited,undifferentiated, boundless, impartite, infinite, vast,inconceivable and free. Space is not divided up into sections.It is just our minds which do that. Space is not organisedaround any particular point. Every point in space is a valuableand important as the next. If you become absorbed, restingconfidently in contemplating this space, you can enjoy feelinghappier, freer, lighter, and brighter, more refined and subtle,suffused with happiness and contentment.

Bell. Lastly, Contemplation of the Element Consciousness. 1. Becoming deeply absorbed in experiencing your body, youbecome aware of the different ways in which you experience thefive Elements of Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Space in your body.Each of these experiences is illuminated by your awareness; whenyou take your attention to a particular aspect of yourself, thatpart of you is lit up, so to speak, by your awareness. Forexample, if you take your awareness to your left big toe, youbegin to experience your toe; you experience your toe in terms ofa number of the five Elements: your toe is solid and firm, at thesame time your toe is soft, and pliable like the Water Element;and then your toe has a certain temperature. And so on. Beingaware of your body in this way your experience of the FiveElements in your body is saturated, permeated by the SixthElement of your awareness and Consciousness. You even think ofthese experiences as being your experiences because they areilluminated by your consciousness.

You are conscious of being aware sometimes by way ofinvolvement with these other Five Elements. The way in which youexperience your awareness and consciousness is through closeassociation with one or another of your different sense organs.Your experience arises in dependence on associating with yourdifferent sense organs, it is conditioned by them, it arises incausal connection with your sense organs. Your usual experienceof your consciousness is individualised, is particularised, isdefined by associating with your different bodily organs of eye,ear, nose, tongue, body. You also experience the inner and outerworld through the door of the ordinary mind in the form ofmemories, images, ideas concepts, theories. The coming togetherof your awareness with the different aspects of how youexperience the other Five Elements in your body is yourexperience of the Element Consciousness in your body. 2. In the same way your consciousness can illuminedifferent manifestations of the Five Elements in the externalworld. Just as your consciousness illumines your experience ofyour body, so in the same way, like a beam of light shining inthe darkness, your consciousness shines out through one of thewindows of the six sensory organs. And this as far as we cantell seems to be what is happening in various ways and degreeswith other sentient life-forms: even an ant seems to manifest adegree of awareness. 3-5. Now reflect what happens to your experience of theElement Consciousness when it is no longer preoccupied with the 5Elements of Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Space through the 6 doorsof the senses, eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and ordinary mind.Consider what happens when you meditate deeply and enter thedhyanas, and progress into the deeper dhyanas. Yourconsciousness is no longer preoccupied with the Five Elements inthe usual way. It is no longer conditioned, and limited by itsassociation with the Five Elements through the six senses. Inthis way your awareness becomes more absorbed in itself, becomingmore concentrated, and focused; you come to feel freer, lighterand brighter; you feel more refined and subtle. Your experienceof yourself is permeated with light, suffused with happiness andcontentment. And in the same way when your body has died, and with ityour sense organs, and has been cremated or is rotting in theground, your consciousness will not be able to associate with thesix sense organs, nor to be aware of an external world that youperceive through your sense organs; in fact, there will no needfor you to associate again with any of the five Elements, no needfor you to be conditioned by them, tied up with them, limited bythem; your consciousness will be free to become more and absorbedin itself, to become brighter and ever brighter, ever more free,open and expansive.

6. In the light of all these reflections, examine yourexperience of the constant flow of your consciousness coming andgoing with the flow of the Five other Elements and ask yourselfwhere you can find a permanently enduring 'self', which you cansay is 'I', or 'me'. Ask yourself what are the consequences ofbecoming permanently identified with your consciousness in thisway, entangled, bound up enamoured with it, entranced by it?Seeking security and refuge in an impermanent and limitedconsciousness surely only causes pain for yourself and others?Consider that just as you could not find a substantial,enduringly permanent self in any of your experiences of the otherFive Elements, either through your five sense organs or in themind, so too you cannot find a substantial, enduringly permanentself in your experience of consciousness. 7. Give up being limited by your attachment toconsciousness in this fixed way, identifying yourself so rigidlyand definitely, restricting your consciousness so fixedly.Instead rest, confidently enjoying the constant flow of yourconsciousness in relation to the five Elements; allow yourawareness to expand, to become free of restrictions, andlimitations, allow your awareness to become absorbed in itself,becoming increasingly focused, and concentrated, ever morecontent, happy and blissful, becoming ever lighter, and brighter,suffused with unlimited, unbounded, radiance like the radiantdepths of an infinite blue sky stretching away infinitely intoevery direction of an inconceivably vast, and wonderfullymysterious open space of endless possibilities.

OM SVABHAVA SUDDHAH SARVADHARMAH SVABHAVA SUDDHO HAM

_______________________________1 'Thought' Selected Poems D.H. Lawrence p.227 Penguin '7922 p.10 Udana - Minor Anthologies Part II. trans. Woodward.Pali Text Society '853 see Philosophy and Psychology in the Abhidharma Guenther p.270Motilal Banarsidass Delhi '914 Shakespeare's Sonnet No.335 Act 2 sc.2 Lear6 DN I.477 Religion of Art p.133 Sangharakshita Windhors8 Tempest 3/29 Sangharakshita Wisdom Beyond Words. Windhorse

10 Philosophy and Psychology of the Abhidharma. H.V. Guenther.p.145. Motilal '7411 ibid.12 ibid. p.17713 see The Survey of Buddhism p.161 Windhorse '8014 ibid.15 Philosophy and Psychology in the Abhidharma. H.V Guentherp.14516 Abhidharmakosa I.12 - quoted ibid. p.14717 Abhidharmakosa I.12 - quoted ibid. p.14718 Attasalini IV 8 - quoted ibid. p.150)19 Macbeth 3/420 ibid. 5/821 'Meditation on a Flame' - The Enchanted Heart p.9222 p.147f Rider '7523 Mitrata 84 p.4224 Aloka The Refuge Tree as Mythic Context (Padmaloka Books) p.2225 ibid. p.2326 Govinda, Lama Anagarika, Creative Meditation and Multi-Dimensional Consciousness (Unwin London '77) p.239.27 ibid. p.24128 Sangharakshita The Three Jewels (Windhorse '77) p.62 & ibid.p.67. .29 Govinda, Lama Anagarika, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism(Rider London '75) p.116.30 ibid. p.137f31 ibid. p.11632 Govinda, Lama Anagarika, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism(Rider, London '75) p.18433 William Blake Auguries of Innocence34 Govinda, Lama Anagarika, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism(Rider London '75) p.11635 Vessantara. Meeting the Buddhas. (Windhorse) p.28936 Aloka The Refuge Tree as Mythic Context, p.3037 Sangharakshita The Drama of Cosmic Enlightenment (Windhorse)p.738 trans. Sangharakshita Dhammapada v1/2 (unpublished)39 Dhammapada v3340 Dhammapada v35/641 Dhammapada v4242 Dhammapada v103/4/543 D.T.Suzuki.The Lankavatara Sutra p.xxi44 ibid.45 Sangharakshita The Three Jewels (Windhorse '77) p.6746 Shenpen Hookham Progressive Stages of Meditation on Emptinessby Ven. Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso. (Longchen Foundation) p.30f.47 Sangharakshita A Survey of Buddhism. (Windhorse '93) p.19848 ibid. [my addition]

49 ibid.50 Sangharakshita The Three Jewels (Windhorse '77) p.8251 Arthur Zajonc Catching the Light (Bantam '93) p.252 see Dhatu Nyanatiloka Buddhist Dictionary53 Dhammapada v.4254 Nyanatiloka Buddhist Dictionary p.194 & Govinda, LamaAnagarika, The Psychological Attitude of Early BuddhistPhilosophy (Rider '69) p.13255 see Arthur Zajonc Catching the Light (Bantam. '93) p.22756 Sangharakshita Mind in Buddhist Psychology - unedited seminartranscript p.8557 Guenther Philosophy and Psychology in Abhidharma (Shambhala'74) p.1258 Sangharakshita Mind in Buddhist Psychology - unedited seminartranscript p.85f & Guenther Philosophy and Psychology inAbhidharma (Shambhala '74) p.12f59 H.V. Guenther & Leslie Kawamura Mind in Buddhist Psychology.(Dharma.'75) p.3860 Majjhima Nikaya Sutta 4361 Samyutta Nikaya XII, Sutta 5362 Nanamoli Visuddhi-magga p.55863 Majjhima Nikaya.Sutta 1864 see Dhatu Nyanatiloka Buddhist Dictionary & Nanamoli VisuddhiMagga p.55865 Arthur Zajonc Catching the Light (Bantam '93) p.566 Sangharakshita The Three Jewels (Windhorse '77) p.8167 Govinda, Lama Anagarika, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism(Rider, London '75) p.74f68 Lankavatara Sutra p.xxiv69 Govinda, Lama Anagarika, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism(Rider, London '75) p.7470 Kevaddha-Sutta Digha Nikaya Vol. 2/1171 Udana VIIIi72 Sangharakshita A Survey of Buddhism (7th Ed.) p.400f73 Horner Anguttara Nikaya I.10.74 Evans-Wentz translation The Tibetan Book of Great Liberation -'The Yoga of Knowing the Mind' (OUP '80) p.211f75 Horner vol.III p.285. for full version76 Horner Chabbisodhanasutta Sutta.112 -. vol.III p.8477 Evans Discourses of the Buddha. Middle Collection. p.42378 ibid.79 ibid.80 ibid.81 trans. John Reynolds. Station Hill '89 para. 7&10 p.12-1482 Govinda, Lama Anagarika, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism(Rider, London '75) p.8483 Sangharakshita Wisdom Beyond Words (Windhorse, '93) p.84 this format for the lead through is only one possible way of

doing the practice, which I devised during the Men's OrdinationRetreat at Guhyaloka in '95, hence the topical references. Takefrom it what you find useful