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Teachers: So I'd like to start by just sort of stepping back and looking at the broad picture of this model of the Eightfold Path.

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Teachers: a worldly 8 vol. Path, as

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Teachers: I've named it.

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Teachers: and you'll also notice, if you have read the Handout, that the eightfold path is divided into 2 sections

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Teachers: into the contemplative life and into the active life.

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Teachers: so by rearranging it, by putting mindfulness, and then

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my

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Teachers: collectedness. and then perspective. and then imagination

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Teachers: into the first

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Teachers: 4 steps that, as it were.

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Teachers: brings together the contemplative

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Teachers: aspects of the path. and then the latter 4 steps

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Teachers: are the active dimensions of the path.

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Teachers: Activation

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Teachers: can't even remember what I call them now have application, survival work, and voice.

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Teachers: Now, this is a distinction that we don't find so explicitly stated in traditional Buddhism, but it's an idea that goes back to the Greeks

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Teachers: who called it the Bios theoreticos.

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Teachers: The Lamb was translated into Latin as the Vita

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Teachers: contemplativa. the contemplative life.

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Teachers: the theoretical life in Greek more, and then the

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Teachers: because politicos.

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Teachers: and again, the word politicos is obviously the root of our word politics. So that's emphasized far more clearly than in the English, the active life, or in Latin, the Vita

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Teachers: activa.

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Teachers: Now the danger with any kind of binary split

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Teachers: is that you think that they're 2 quite separate things? Well, they're not. And we have to remember that the eightfold path

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Teachers:  in many ways a sequencing of a set of practices, some of which are.

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or to do with what's going on inside ourselves.

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Teachers: others to do with what is going on in the world outside us and our response to it.

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Teachers: But that doesn't mean that they are somehow segregated.

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Teachers: and as we'll see tomorrow, so I'm not going to go labor this point. Now there is a seamless continuity

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Teachers: from the contemplative dimensions of the path into the active dimensions of the path. And in practice, of course.

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Teachers: we're always contemplative beings. even if we're engaged in. you know some.

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Teachers: you know.

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Teachers: active political

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Teachers: work. We're totally involved in a situation in the world that doesn't mean that we suddenly stop being

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Teachers: conscious of what's going on in our minds.

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Teachers: any more than when we are

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Teachers: sitting quietly in meditation? Are we somehow cut off or severed from the

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Teachers: world around

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Teachers: us. Other people here, for example, the the songs of the birds.

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Teachers: everything else is going on around us. We cannot, we cannot in real terms, ever

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Teachers: separate these 2

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Teachers: dimensions. In other words.

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Teachers: be cautious not to absolutise them.

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Teachers: Think of them as 2 different things. They're not the different ways of engaging with a continuum

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Teachers: of of thoughts.

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Teachers: words, and acts that run through everything.

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Teachers: Someone brought up a question. I think it was Gowan yesterday about how the classical idea of right view, and, like Winton, I'm very, very wary of using that word.

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Teachers: but nonetheless it is widespread, so we may as well acknowledge that.

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Teachers: That in different Buddhist traditions do we get different emphases on? You know what that means, and we do

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Teachers: in my Tibetan tradition, the Gallupa right view is clearly the the understanding of of Shunyata, of emptiness

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Teachers: and the absence of inherent existence. That's right view, and pretty much everything else is peripheral to that

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Teachers: in the Pali. In the Terravada tradition, right view is, as has already been mentioned, often said to be understanding, impermanence. suffering, and not self the 3 marks of being.

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Teachers: But

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Teachers: as is the

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Teachers: emphasis, at least for me in this secularization or this secular dharma is to go back to the root sources

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Teachers: to go back to the Pali text and see what the Buddha says.

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Teachers: and he actually says neither of those 2 things

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Teachers: emptiness, or the 3 marks of being as constituting right view. This is often the case we take on board.

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Teachers: What a Buddhist tradition has told us in perfectly good faith.

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Teachers: and when you check in back with the earliest sources we have, we find we don't find it.

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Teachers: All Buddhist traditions, for example, are committed to the notion of there being 2 truths, relative truth and absolute truth or ultimate truth.

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Teachers: Go back to the Pali text. It's not there.

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Teachers: It's just not there that when I discovered that came as a bit of a shock.

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Teachers: and we'll also, and I could give other examples. But I don't want to digress. But when we go back to samadhi.

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Teachers: Right view, or in this case simply

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Teachers: our perspective on our practice.

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Teachers: We find one Suta.

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Teachers: It's the ninth discourse in the middle length discourses the margins. It's called summer dietiti. Suta

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Teachers: looks like a good place to begin.

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Teachers: and like many of these palite texts, it's probably grown over time, it's expanded, and in those cases it's always useful to see what's the first thing the Buddha says.

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Teachers: The first thing the Buddha says about Samadhiti

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Teachers: is the the person. The one with samadhiti is the one who's able to differentiate and distinguish between what is skillful and what is unskilful.

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Teachers: That's completely different to what you'll find in most standard

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Teachers: Buddhist presentations of this topic. And what's striking about it, and I think particularly pertinent to what we're doing here. Ethical living summer ditty here is understood as ethical.

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Teachers: It's not understood about as how to get reality right to understand things as they really are, which is an ontological truth claim

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Teachers: whether that be emptiness, or whether it be in permanence and suffering, and not self. It's ethical.

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Teachers: and my hunch. And of course I might be wrong is that

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Teachers: the Dharma started out as primarily an ethical practice. How to lead a good life, how to live well in the world, with oneself, with others with everything else.

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Teachers: and at a certain point it took a kind of ontological turn. or, we might say.

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Teachers: in a slightly similar way, an epistemological term. It started to become Buddhists, started to become interested in the nature of reality.

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Teachers: and particularly how we get reality wrong.

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Teachers: So it's about correcting our misconceptions, our misperceptions till they accord with reality.

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Teachers: And in the history of Indian thought

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Teachers: Buddhists contributed a huge amount to epistemology, ontology, and logic.

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Teachers: They really help develop these fields of knowledge, and they're not irrelevant. These are.

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Teachers: you know, universal human fields of inquiry and and Buddhism has contributed a great deal to that in ancient and medieval India.

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Teachers: But arguably, in doing so, it kind of lost sight of the ball. It lost sight of the priority of ethics, which

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Teachers: in the Samadhiti Suta is right there at the very first thing to pay attention to

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Teachers: samadhi, a perspective that one's perspective on life is that which helps you make better judgments.

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Teachers: What's the good thing to do? What's the the not good thing to do? Skillful, unskilful Kusalah Akusa?

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Teachers: So, in other words, perspective cannot be separated from ethics.

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Teachers: It's important, not because it gets you in touch with reality. It's important because it helps you live better. And you can say the same thing in what I believe, and I might be wrong.

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Teachers: that the dharma started out as a set of 4 tasks or paths, as I suspect they were originally called.

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Teachers: and turned into 4 truths.

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Teachers: The tasks are about what to do.

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Teachers: to embrace life or suffering, to let reactivity be to see the stopping of reactivity and to respond appropriately according to the framework of the eightfold path that is entirely ethical.

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Teachers: The 4 noble truths

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Teachers: are once again ontological

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Teachers: life is suffering.

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Teachers: the cause of suffering is craving. And so.

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Teachers: in other words, what is starts out, I believe.

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Teachers: as an ethical set of ethical injunctions turns into a set of metaphysical truth claims.

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Teachers: and rather than

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Teachers: just craving, we now get ignorance plugged in prior to craving.

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Teachers: So, in other words, is getting reality wrong.

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Teachers: misaligning your perception with what is that becomes the problem rather than

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Teachers: whether your response to suffering is appropriate or not?

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Teachers: 2 very different ways of

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Teachers: looking at the world.

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Teachers: and

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Teachers: one of the phrases that to me is is is totally central

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Teachers: to this way of thinking is to recognize that the problem with craving

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Teachers: and grasping and ignorance, all of those things is not that they cause suffering, although they very often do.

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Teachers: I don't think that's a big secret. We know that from experience that they clearly don't help us

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Teachers: be happy much of the time.

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Teachers: But the real problem with craving and ignorance and so on, is not that it makes us unhappy or suffer. but that it prevents us from responding appropriately and wisely and compassionately and kindly to the world in which we live with others.

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Teachers: That is the turning point, or has been the turning point. In my own thinking, this through over the years

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Teachers: is to recognize that the problem is craving is not that it's the origin of suffering, but the problem with craving is that it impedes or hinders

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Teachers: prevents us from

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Teachers: responding in a non-reactive and thereby compassionate, loving

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Teachers: and kind way. In other words. the problem with craving and ignorance is ethical.

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Teachers: First and foremost, it's not ontological

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Teachers: or epistemological.

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Teachers: I know those words are sort of fancy philosophical words, and you may not be too happy with them. But I hope the point

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Teachers: is clear.

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Teachers: The other point about the eightfold path that we haven't really touched on, although the term has come up, I think, in all. in what all 3 of us have been talking about

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Teachers: is that the eightfold path is what is how the Buddha initially defined the middle way.

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Teachers: Now, again, the middle way is not an idea that's exclusive to Buddhism. We find it pretty much in most traditions whether we call it the Golden Mean or the middle way. It doesn't make too much of a difference.

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Teachers: My friend Robert Ellis, who's a British philosopher, an ex-buddhist Buddhist.

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Teachers: He's written. He's developed a whole middle way philosophy. Some of you might be familiar with it, and he's he's written a book on the Christian Middle Way.

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Teachers: He's written a book on on the Buddhist Middle way. He's explored the idea of the middle Way. We find throughout pretty much every human culture.

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Teachers: So the middle way is not an exclusively Buddhist thing, but it is nonetheless an idea that the Buddha laid out very, very clearly at the outset of his teaching as central to what he was about.

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Teachers: And, in fact, if you look at the Buddha's first discourse. that's how it begins, he says, because I have found a middle way. And what is that middle way? It is this noble eightfold path.

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Teachers: The middle way is sometimes used rather sort of glibly, as a kind of a Buddhist slogan. But if we think more deeply about it as Robert Ellis has done.

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Teachers:  we find that it's an incredibly rich idea. And in the

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Teachers: in the first discourse the middle way is is described simply as a middle way between sensory indulgence. On the one hand

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Teachers: and self-mortification on the other, in other words, indulging one's one's passions, one's lust, one's desires to getting what you want on the one hand and leading a life

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Teachers: pure hedonism! And, on the other hand, sort of swinging to the other pole, and starting to engage in in the sort of self

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Teachers: self punishing activities.

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Teachers: whether that is literally like the ancient Indians who would stand on one leg for 2 days at a time, or whether it's, you know, following some extremely severe dietary regime.

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Teachers: any of these activities could become

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Teachers: a form of self-mortification, a form of self-punishment which very often has at its root a kind of self-hatred. I don't like myself. I don't like the way I live I live, whereas self-indulgence is about in a sense, a kind of a craving to fulfill one's basic desires, and to leave everything else

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Teachers: as of no importance.

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Teachers: But as the as the Buddha continues in his teaching. He expands this notion of the middle way, or, we might say, deepens this notion of the middle way.

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Teachers: so that we get a text which again, I think, is very central to this secular Buddhist practice, and is called the Kachana Ghota Suta.

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Teachers: The discourse to Kaca Ghoto.

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It's found in the connected discourses. I think it's

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I think it's Section 12, number 15. But I'm not not entirely sure I can look it up.

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Teachers: But this is an important text, because once again the the interlocutor, a man called Katanagota. Asks the Buddha. You say? Samadhiti samadhiti? What do you mean, Samadhitti? You say? Right? View right view what do you mean? Right view?

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Teachers: And then and then we get a very, very succinct. It's a very short text, but I think a very, very revealing text as to what the Buddha means by

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Teachers: this true perspective, we might say this complete perspective.

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Teachers: I'm not going to go into detail, but the again. The first thing, he says.

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Teachers: which is the piece that's least likely to have been elaborated later

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Teachers: summer ditty is leading a life that is no longer enthralled to binary, thinking

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Teachers: no longer enthralled to what he calls Ati and Nutty

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Teachers: is and isn't

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Teachers: in the text that Lenora cited. Last night this very same phrase comes up. The Buddha says something like the most of the people in the world are dependent upon the ideas of it is, and it isn't

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Teachers: into a and not a

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Teachers: that's not the Buddha that's Aristotle, but it's the same basic idea. We tend to conceive of ourselves, to conceive of the world very easily by splitting it into binaries, into dualities.

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Teachers: And so again, there's a danger when we introduce

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Teachers: a binary like contemplative life, and active life is a very readily so think of these as 2 separate things.

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Teachers: and there are many examples. There's self-mort, self-indulgence, self-mortification is obviously one, but we can extend it to things like permanence and impermanence

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Teachers: these are. This is a binary way of thinking. Well, self

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Teachers: and selflessness. It's a binary way of thinking, certainty, and uncertainty.

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Teachers: We're plumbing for uncertainty here, but that only makes sense in contrast to certainty.

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Teachers: any more than self only makes sense in contrast to what is not self.

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Teachers: All of this is binary thinking one of the philosophers or thinkers that animated the Buddhist tradition after the Buddhist death

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Teachers: is Nagarjuna. I'm sure you've all heard of Nagarjuna

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Teachers: and Nagadiana's key work is called

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Teachers: in my translation verses from the center verses on the Middle Way.

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Teachers: and in this text he only cites one Buddhist discourse by name.

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Teachers: and that is the Kajana Gorta Sutter. The discourse to Kachana Gorta. the one I've just cited

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Teachers: not to be so get stuck in binary thinking

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Teachers: binary thinking in many ways splits the world in 2

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Teachers: into 2 separate things, and they are usually then valorized as one is good and one is not good. One is good, one is bad, you know. Self is bad, not self is good uncertainty, that's

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Teachers: that's good certainty. That's problematic. That's not to say that these distinctions are not useful, they can be. but they become problematic as soon as they're absolutized.

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Teachers: So the middle way, and by implication the eightfold path. because, after all the eightfold path is

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Teachers: this middle way has to be understood as seeking to find a balance, find a course, a way of life

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Teachers: that is ever alert to the dangers of slipping into a binary position.

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Teachers: Nowadays we we might talk of, say, gender issues, for example.

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Teachers: you know, gay or straight again, that's a binary opposition. And now there's an increasing awareness of the fluidity of gender.

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Teachers: and I think that's a very middle way. Ish.

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Teachers:  Understanding that things the world is not

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Teachers: dividable neatly into these opposites.

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Teachers: Another example that's come up already in our discussions here. Is the question of hope. hope, and despair

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Teachers: in French. The connection between these words is much clearer. You have Espoir and des espoire

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Teachers: despair is, is, is, is is a lack of hope. or the opposite of home.

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Teachers: hope, and despair.

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Teachers: and in my conversations with my friends in Israel this came up a lot. People are experiencing despair, and they feel that they've lost hope

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Teachers: been in extreme existential crises that one might

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encounter.

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Teachers: It's very understandable how you slip

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Teachers: very easily and spontaneously into one of these binary oppositions.

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Teachers: and some of my Israeli friends were also saying, Buddhism doesn't seem to work here. My practice doesn't seem to work. I'm I'm finding myself caught up in precisely the things that I thought I'd sort of freed myself from.

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Teachers: But when the proverbial shit hits the fan. then your practice is really put to the test.

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Teachers: How often is any religious practice a way of simply providing you with a degree of consolation and comfort?

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Teachers: It's often when things really get bad when you're facing death, for example. or violence.

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Teachers: whatever it might be, then your practice is really put to the test, and arguably, it's only in those occasions that you can really get the measure

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Teachers: of your practice.

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Teachers: I remember very. very vividly

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Teachers: a conversation I once had with a Tibetan llama. I got to know quite well I was his interpreter for a couple of years in Hamburg, and we lived together, and it was a very small community at that time, so we had long, long conversations.

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Teachers: and one thing he told me, that always stuck. He said he was in Lhasa

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Teachers: in the 1950 s. When the Chinese invaded, and then in March, 1959,

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Teachers:  There was an uprising amongst the Tibetan people against the Chinese, and the Chinese did as most

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Teachers: totalitarian regimes do. They just turn the guns on the protesters and and set them off to start killing people. And since one of the bases of the

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Teachers: uprising was in them in certain monasteries around Lhasa. The howitzers were aimed at the monasteries.

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Teachers: so from one day to the next, almost these monks, who had been leading this Buddhist life for all their lives or most of their lives, suddenly found that they had a

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Teachers: they faced an immediate existential threat.

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Teachers: and my friend Geshee took to Nawan said

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Teachers: he could not have foretold.

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Teachers: 24 h earlier. how any particular monk would have behaved.

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Teachers: he said, some of the monks whom he held in great esteem

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Teachers: completely lost, it fell into despair, and killed themselves

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and other monks. who he may also have held him as in a

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Teachers: esteem or not. I can't remember, said, Okay, I'm not going to give into this. So they pick up their bag of thumper and a couple of books, and head off for a totally unknown exile across the Himalayas in India.

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Teachers: In other words, it was only when their practice was put to the test.

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Teachers: Was it somehow then able to be truly measured.

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Teachers: And again, I think I certainly need the humility

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Teachers: to recognize if my practice were put to the test like that.

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Teachers: To be perfectly frank. I don't know how I would respond.

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Teachers: and that was very much the experience of some of my friends in Israel.

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Teachers: You know. They found themselves responding or reacting in ways they could not have foreseen in the abstract.

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Teachers: So this has led me to reflect that if hope and despair are simply

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Teachers: pairs within a binary set.

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Teachers: in other words, poles of a spectrum.

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Teachers: rather than absolutes that exist in and of themselves. Then what would be a middle way

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Teachers: between hope and despair.

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Teachers: I think a useful way of getting out of binary thinking is to think in terms of spectra.

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Teachers: It's not to deny that there's hope and deny that there, there's despair. But to recognize that they're the extreme points on a range of

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Teachers: human

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Teachers: possibilities that go from one to the other. There's a. There's a kind of kind, a spectrum of

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Teachers: of gradations like a rainbow.

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Teachers: And we usually find ourselves hovering around the middle somewhere. Probably.

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Teachers: So the middle way is basically learning to live in this spectrum, and a spectrum is uncomfortable because it's already been pointed out. It's uncertain. You don't quite know where you are. It shifts, it moves

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Teachers: provisional. it's tentative. it keeps moving around. and that's like live.

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Teachers: So

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Teachers: how would what would a middle-way approach to the binary of hope and despair be.

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Teachers: I wonder if it wouldn't be something like creativity.

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Teachers: And

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Teachers: this is an idea that we do find in Buddhism, although it's been largely buried.

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Teachers: But the Buddha describes 4 steps of creativity. You'll find them in my roadmap. The colored chart.

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Teachers:  Creativity is our capacity to imagine another way of doing

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Teachers: or making, or being something. and the Buddha presents 4 steps whereby this creativity can be nurtured.

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Teachers: the first of which is aspiration

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Teachers: or literally desire.

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Teachers: in other words, to, to, to, to clarify. What is it that I want?

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Teachers: Let's say I'm in Israel or Palestine.

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Teachers: you know, to resolve to get out of this binary opposition. What could I imagine as

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Teachers: something

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Teachers: that would be desirable?

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Teachers: A solution in this situation?

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Teachers: Secondly,

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Teachers: Courage!

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Teachers: Where can I find the courage to actually commit myself to living a life in the light of that solution. How can I get there?

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Teachers: I might want peace, for example. But

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Teachers: how do I

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Teachers: get to that piece, and how do I find within myself the courage, the determination, the resolve to work

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Teachers: for that piece? The next step, the third step is intuition.

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Teachers: The word impali is cheetah, usually translated vaguely as mind or

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Teachers: something, but it's more like

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Teachers: it's it's a soulful quality of

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Teachers: tapping into a source of knowledge, of insight that's not that of the the rational mind.

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Teachers: The intuition fits quite well, Psyche, in Greek.

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Teachers: so to be able to to tap into into a pre-rational.

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Teachers: intuitive source, the sort of source from which

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Teachers: poetry and art and even great scientific insights come from something that is perhaps more unconscious.

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Teachers: But that's the source of so much

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Teachers: creative thinking, creative

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Teachers: behavior. And the fourth step

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Teachers: is experimentation.

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Teachers: Try things out. learn from your mistakes.

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Teachers: So that I mean, that's very, very roughly sketched.

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Teachers: And unfortunately, although this is a key, these are 4 key virtues. Amongst the 32

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Teachers: virtues the Buddha

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Teachers: encourages us to cultivate. There's nothing on them in the Pali discourses.

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Teachers: They list it, but never explain. And worse than that, they're turned into.

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Teachers: they're understood. They've come to be understood as as achieving magical powers.

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Alright.

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Teachers: So that would be one example. Again, referring to a situation that

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Teachers: recently had to, you know, try and respond to, and that's I found that a useful way to thinking about creativity as a practice.

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Teachers: and I, perhaps one of the challenges of a secular

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Teachers: Buddhism, is to reinstate the centrality of

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Teachers: creative practices.

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Teachers: not just art and poetry, and so on, but actually learning to live more creatively.

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Teachers: Martine speaks of creative engagement.

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Teachers: which is again very much

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Teachers: an acknowledgement of how this is. This. Practice is not just following a set of instructions and getting them right, and then getting enlightened.

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Teachers: This practice is very much

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Teachers: one in which we need to exercise our own creative imagination in order to respond appropriately to the situations in life which are very often unprecedented are things for which you cannot legislate.

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Teachers: You have to imagine solutions, and that's what brings us somewhat late in the talk

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Teachers: to the topic of the day. But I hope

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Teachers: that those preliminary reflections have set a context for how we now might understand

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Teachers: imagination. which is the fourth in my iteration of the eightfold path. Imagination.

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Teachers: Now, how does imagination tie into what we were talking about yesterday as our perspective.

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Teachers: a perspective, and as an example, the perspective of the 4 tasks

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Teachers: and the 4 facts. That's a perspective

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Teachers: that provides you with a kind of an orientation or a framework. But it doesn't tell you what to do.

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Teachers: In other words, you can have very firm commitment and belief in

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Teachers: certain set of primary values and principles, and so on, and so forth, and be heartfelt, committed to them. But that in itself is not going to actually

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Teachers: provide you with

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Teachers: the response. You know what to say, what to think, what to do in a concrete situation in life.

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Teachers: And this is where the Vita contemplativa.

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Teachers: the contemplative life now begins to engage with the active life. It's, in a sense, the kind of bridge.

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Teachers: So perspective gives you a frame. but imagination

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Teachers: has to fill in and flesh out

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Teachers: that frame. It has to replace or, let's say, instantiate abstract norms

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Teachers: with concrete, unstable. ambivalent situations in the world.

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Teachers:  What we're called upon to do, which is a great challenge very often is to imagine solutions to problems

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Teachers: that are both in accordance with our underlying values and principles, our perspective. and yet can also serve as effective responses to a real real world dilemma.

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Teachers: That's the middle way. Again.

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Teachers: finding a middle way between principle and

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Teachers: concrete situations in life.

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Teachers: Roughly speaking, imagination is our capacity to picture to ourselves situations, things, people who are not physically present.

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Teachers: Our imagination

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Teachers: is interior. It goes on inside our own minds. It goes on very vividly sometimes when we're sitting in meditation, all kinds of images.

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Teachers: ideas, words, memories. come to mind.

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Teachers: Unfortunately, imagination is often somewhat treated negatively in Buddhism. It's a it's a distraction.

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Teachers: and it can be.

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Teachers: If it's in a sense not integrated into a form of training. It's just what the mind throws up. We imagine all kinds of stuff, fantasies, daydreams. This is all

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Teachers: the consequence of the imagination.

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Teachers: but that's really the kind of uncontrolled imagination just the the mind left to its own devices will just pour forth this stuff.

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Teachers: Imagination, as a practice has to do with

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Teachers: establishing a context, a framework. And this is not just a context of ideas. but a context in which we are more embodied.

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Teachers: And we're embedded in a sangha. In a community. imagination needs to be somehow contained

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Teachers: and formal contemplative practice, like mindfulness, like collectiveness.

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Teachers: these are ways to achieve a degree of inner stability within which the imagination is not to be controlled so much as to be held within parameters that can then direct its energy and power to working with real problems.

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Teachers: issues, conflicts in our actual life. And the same is true of of Sangha.

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Teachers: Community

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Teachers: community is embedding one's life in a set of meaningful friendships.

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Teachers: of people who we can trust as being there for us

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Teachers: who are supporting us in our practice.

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Teachers: So that, too, is is, is is a able to hold

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Teachers: somewhat the otherwise. Frequently, you know, turbulent eruptions of our

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Teachers: imagination.

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Teachers: Imagination is also indispensable for empathy.

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Teachers: Our capacity to imagine what the other person feels.

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Teachers: Empathy is a form of imagination.

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Teachers: It may not feel like pictures going around in our mind, but it's our capacity to imagine what it's like to be in the other person's situation.

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Teachers: And again, we might think of empathy more as a feeling as maybe even an emotion.

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Teachers: It's only possible because we're able to picture

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Teachers: another person's experience of being in their shoes.

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Teachers: and whether that's a close, intimate partner or friend, or whether it's

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people bombarded

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Teachers: with weaponry on the other side of the world.

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Teachers: it's that same capacity to be able to imagine what it's like for them.

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Teachers: Mahayana Buddhism has some very good meditations. Shanti Deva particularly exchanging self for others, is a

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Teachers: is a well-known practice, where you consciously, you know, take it into your meditation to think of yourself

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Teachers: into as being the other

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Teachers: in that sense, breaking down this

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Teachers: binary self, other

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Teachers: literally feeling, thinking, imagining what it's like to be somebody else.

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Teachers: And imagination is also, of course, utterly essential for what we call creativity.

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Teachers: that I've just mentioned.

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Teachers: A creative solution is something that arises through the power of our imagination to come up with

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Teachers: a new way of thinking or looking at something, and this very often requires, you know, just sort of some. Some are sometimes sort of entering into a kind of creative reverie.

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Teachers: You're just letting the mind mull over and ponder

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Teachers: picture. And also when the mind settles and is less caught up in reactive patterns.

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Teachers: that non reactive space also becomes a space in which

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Teachers: intuitions

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Teachers: ideas! Almost magically, it seems.

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Teachers: rise up and appear to us

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Teachers: in my work as a writer, and also to some extent. As an artist I do visual art.

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Teachers: I've become over the years more and more aware of how the work, the book.

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Teachers: the collage. will come to me if I let it?

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Teachers: If I stop being worried about, am I going to be able to? Am I going to have anything interesting to say about the next topic.

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Teachers: or getting letting the rational mind somehow get anguished about trying to control the

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Teachers: the the way the writing's going to go. or the next collage I'm going to do.

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Teachers: I've I've learned now through basically through time and experience.

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Teachers: I don't have to worry about. If I can let go. If I can let that

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Teachers: those anxious, neurotic ideas just be

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Teachers: and allow a space in which I can trust

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face in really

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Teachers: that that will provide an adequate source for the next chapter of the book. The next collage I'm going to make

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Teachers: it will happen.

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Teachers: So I think that imagination is something we have to allow but to allow it within a safe

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Teachers: and trusted space

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Teachers: that's both contemplative, held in a sense of community held in a sense of principles and values like the 4 tasks.

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Teachers: but once we secure that space.

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Teachers: the imagination, I think, instead of being chaotic.

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Teachers: can start to become, as it were, more

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Teachers:  More rich and more focused on the projects that we're engaged with.

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Teachers: and I'm sure you've all had the experience, you know we say in it, say in English. Well, I have to sleep on it. We struggle all day with some problem at work.

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Teachers: How are we going to fix this? How are we going to fix this, and it's often when you stop worrying about it. Sleep on it. Let's say you'll go off and jog for a mile, or go and do something completely different. And then suddenly

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Teachers: the solution arrives almost by magic. But it's not by magic. It's because we've somehow let go of the very things that were impeding

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Teachers: that idea to be imagined. Worrying, anxiety-ing.

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Teachers: if that's the right word, actually get in the way

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Teachers: of our natural capacity to imagine

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Teachers: solutions.

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Teachers: Imagining, of course, is also very much tied up with thinking. Some people think in images, some people think in words.

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Teachers: and the word in in pali for imagination, which is Sankapa

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Teachers: can. Also SIM can simply simply mean thinking.

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Teachers: In Tibetan, when they translated Sunkapa they translated it as Dogpa, which is the

394
00:45:04.200 --> 00:45:08.080
Teachers: also the translation of Vitaka, which means thinking.

395
00:45:08.740 --> 00:45:16.389
Teachers: And again, like imagination. Thinking can just be a kind of muddled rush of ideas and thoughts

396
00:45:16.670 --> 00:45:22.219
Teachers: or thinking can be a conscious contemplative practice.

397
00:45:23.160 --> 00:45:24.390
Teachers: and

398
00:45:24.440 --> 00:45:34.670
Teachers: in many forms of Buddhism, and also in other religious traditions. I think of, for example, the the exercises of Ignatius of Loyola.

399
00:45:34.980 --> 00:45:40.159
Teachers: which is basically a sequence of ideas and images that are consciously brought to mind.

400
00:45:40.710 --> 00:45:52.109
Teachers: But in Tibetan Buddhist practice, for example, the first meditations I ever did were basically a thematic step-by-step

401
00:45:52.270 --> 00:45:54.990
reflections on a series of themes.

402
00:45:55.050 --> 00:46:00.530
Teachers: the precious human rebirth, you know 18 points, and you go through each one. You think about them.

403
00:46:00.610 --> 00:46:04.470
Teachers: You don't just think about them in the sense of just naming them.

404
00:46:05.290 --> 00:46:08.350
Teachers: But as the mind settles as you get quiet.

405
00:46:08.600 --> 00:46:21.269
Teachers: you take those points and you come back to them day after day in your meditation, and you deepen them, you you think through them, around them, you mull over them, and as you do this, that also.

406
00:46:21.770 --> 00:46:28.209
Teachers: Not only embeds those ideas more in your felt sense.

407
00:46:28.570 --> 00:46:36.219
Teachers: but it also engenders fresh perspectives and insights the new ideas about

408
00:46:36.270 --> 00:46:37.940
Teachers: these same topics.

409
00:46:38.410 --> 00:46:49.650
Teachers: so imagination and thinking in that broad sense. what Heidegger calls denken with. You know, with a lot of kind of weight. To really think

410
00:46:50.190 --> 00:46:55.319
Teachers: deeply and clearly and persistently about something.

411
00:46:55.350 --> 00:47:02.410
Teachers: These all are included under the rubric of imagination.

412
00:47:02.870 --> 00:47:06.390
Teachers: It's an imagination thinking in pictures, in words

413
00:47:06.820 --> 00:47:11.090
Teachers: we need to think of as as somehow coming together.

414
00:47:15.740 --> 00:47:18.130
Teachers: Imagination also

415
00:47:19.290 --> 00:47:23.190
Teachers: allows us to engage more

416
00:47:24.020 --> 00:47:32.470
Teachers: more fully, perhaps, or more meaningfully, with the myths, the archetypes, the symbols

417
00:47:32.610 --> 00:47:36.450
Teachers: that constitute the great narratives of human culture.

418
00:47:37.000 --> 00:47:44.849
Teachers: It's difficult to appreciate a a play by Shakespeare, or a poem by Keats, or a painting by Picasso.

419
00:47:45.050 --> 00:47:48.410
Teachers: without engaging with them imaginatively

420
00:47:48.740 --> 00:47:54.330
Teachers: that they not only trigger associations in the mind.

421
00:47:54.460 --> 00:48:01.659
Teachers: but they tell us something about ourselves that perhaps can't be communicated just in.

422
00:48:01.900 --> 00:48:06.950
Teachers: in, in in doctrines and words and theories. They're useful, too.

423
00:48:07.220 --> 00:48:14.960
Teachers: but I find myself in a way more deeply moved and engaged by

424
00:48:15.260 --> 00:48:16.330
Teachers: a painting.

425
00:48:16.830 --> 00:48:29.190
Teachers: We went, Martine and I to an exhibition in Sydney at the moment, which is a sort of retrospective of the art of Vasily Kandinsky.

426
00:48:29.440 --> 00:48:38.930
Teachers: It's it's largely abstract. but it somehow engages me in a way that I can't actually describe. but it speaks

427
00:48:39.310 --> 00:48:47.859
Teachers: to me in a way in the way that you know music speaks to you theater, cinema literature.

428
00:48:48.270 --> 00:48:53.130
Teachers: You engage with these media through your imagination.

429
00:48:53.320 --> 00:49:03.239
Teachers: and they allow us a kind of engagement with a much broader wealth of human experience and tradition

430
00:49:03.310 --> 00:49:09.080
Teachers: that we could, though, that we could sort of have access to just

431
00:49:09.290 --> 00:49:13.249
Teachers: within the sphere of our own personal experience.

432
00:49:14.000 --> 00:49:16.070
Teachers: So imagination is a form of

433
00:49:16.190 --> 00:49:20.260
Teachers: of communicating with tradition, with other cultures

434
00:49:20.410 --> 00:49:26.949
Teachers: being open to a non-verbal, non-rational language.

435
00:49:30.400 --> 00:49:36.469
Teachers: Now the word Sankafa. which I translate as imagination

436
00:49:36.540 --> 00:49:42.610
Teachers: comes from the pali word kapeti sang kapa kapeti.

437
00:49:42.880 --> 00:49:48.420
Teachers: and the dictionary definition of Capetti is to create.

438
00:49:48.580 --> 00:49:54.860
Teachers: to build, to construct. to arrange, to prepare

439
00:49:54.970 --> 00:49:56.430
Teachers: to order.

440
00:49:58.610 --> 00:50:07.529
Teachers: In other words. imagination is crucial to the way in which we construct and organise ourselves and our world.

441
00:50:08.220 --> 00:50:15.840
Teachers: It allows us ethically to conceive and to imagine the kind of person I aspire to be.

442
00:50:16.750 --> 00:50:28.110
Teachers: Imagination allows us access to. You know, figures we admire. whether they be the Buddha and Jesus, or whether they be contemporary figures

443
00:50:28.790 --> 00:50:40.490
Teachers: from different walks of life. People who somehow embody those things we intuitively feel to be worthy of the greatest respect

444
00:50:40.680 --> 00:50:42.070
Teachers: and attention.

445
00:50:42.780 --> 00:50:49.140
Teachers: It also allows us to imagine the kind of world we wish to share with others.

446
00:50:50.480 --> 00:50:54.140
Teachers: to imagine a better future for

447
00:50:54.600 --> 00:50:57.840
for our descendants, for those who will follow us.

448
00:50:58.920 --> 00:51:00.779
Teachers: to become, as

449
00:51:01.000 --> 00:51:03.670
were a more responsible ancestor

450
00:51:04.130 --> 00:51:05.599
Teachers: when we're long gone.

451
00:51:06.040 --> 00:51:18.320
Teachers: But perhaps through our participation in a collective imaginary. we've helped contribute to the world that will come.

452
00:51:20.450 --> 00:51:28.249
Teachers: Now, all of this might sound a bit strange to you if you're used to hearing Sankapa translated as intention.

453
00:51:29.420 --> 00:51:33.469
Teachers: And that's a very common translation, if not the normal translation

454
00:51:33.550 --> 00:51:42.430
Teachers: that we find in the broad Vipassana community of right view. Right? Intention. I think that's completely mistaken.

455
00:51:42.570 --> 00:51:44.900
Teachers: I don't think it has anything to do with intention.

456
00:51:45.630 --> 00:51:49.890
Teachers: and I find it very so weird that that has become so.

457
00:51:50.560 --> 00:51:51.760
Teachers: The standard

458
00:51:52.490 --> 00:52:06.399
Teachers:  Everything I've said so far has not brought in intention one bit. and yet it's I hope it has brought out something very rich to our lives.

459
00:52:06.970 --> 00:52:12.260
Teachers: I think the reason that traditional religions, Buddhism, being no exception, have

460
00:52:12.290 --> 00:52:21.419
Teachers: tend to avoid words like creativity and imagination is because creativity and imagination can be subversive.

461
00:52:21.800 --> 00:52:24.819
Teachers: Creativity and imagination are dangerous.

462
00:52:25.150 --> 00:52:37.810
Teachers: Religious orthodoxies don't want you to think differently. They don't want you to imagine another way of doing this practice. They don't want you to imagine the Buddha differently from the way

463
00:52:38.500 --> 00:52:41.290
Teachers: that the tradition presents the Buddha.

464
00:52:41.990 --> 00:52:48.689
Teachers: Hence you don't find this language very much, but both philologically

465
00:52:49.210 --> 00:52:51.650
Teachers: and through

466
00:52:51.710 --> 00:53:06.410
Teachers: very much through our own experience. I think all of us value creativity. We value imagination, and I feel it can be found there in these early strata of Buddhist texts.

467
00:53:06.450 --> 00:53:08.010
Teachers: in a way that

468
00:53:08.090 --> 00:53:14.250
Teachers: can allow us to rehabilitate these qualities into the eightfold path itself.

469
00:53:15.340 --> 00:53:21.440
Teachers: But this does not mean that imagination has nothing to do with intention.

470
00:53:22.180 --> 00:53:32.029
Teachers: Imagination has a huge amount to do with intention, because it's through imagination that we then arrive at making a choice.

471
00:53:32.560 --> 00:53:39.440
Teachers: particularly if we're imagining what to do in a particular situation.

472
00:53:39.660 --> 00:53:49.430
Teachers: Imagination is that which prepares us enables us to arrive at what is hopefully

473
00:53:49.960 --> 00:53:54.110
Teachers: a good judgment, a good choice, a cheetah.

474
00:53:55.650 --> 00:54:07.219
Teachers: It's very odd that intention is used as the translation of Sankapa, because intention. There's a perfectly good word in Pali for intention.

475
00:54:07.420 --> 00:54:12.310
Teachers: It's Chet Chetna and the Buddha makes great importance of Chetama.

476
00:54:12.430 --> 00:54:20.670
Teachers: He, in fact, he says, what is action? He says action is intention. He doesn't say Sankapa. He says, Chetam.

477
00:54:21.100 --> 00:54:22.919
Teachers: and that's what we're going to look at tomorrow.

478
00:54:23.390 --> 00:54:30.539
Teachers: So I'm not going to even start on that now. But hopefully, this helps us to at least consider

479
00:54:30.890 --> 00:54:41.240
Teachers: how imagination and a kind of deep reflection and thinking aren't integral practice, every much as

480
00:54:42.050 --> 00:54:43.480
Teachers: important as

481
00:54:43.490 --> 00:54:47.900
Teachers: mindfulness, collectedness, perspective.

482
00:54:47.970 --> 00:54:52.889
Teachers: imagination, which then brings us to the threshold of

483
00:54:53.080 --> 00:54:57.769
Teachers: action, which, as the Buddha said, is intention.

484
00:54:57.910 --> 00:54:59.830
Teachers: choice decision.

485
00:55:00.420 --> 00:55:03.360
Teachers: That's where I'll continue tomorrow.

486
00:55:05.820 --> 00:55:09.519
Teachers: Okay, I spoke longer than I thought I would.

487
00:55:09.900 --> 00:55:13.769
Teachers:  we have

488
00:55:15.700 --> 00:55:21.989
Teachers: about 45 min to go if you'd like to stand up and shake around. We've been sitting for an hour.

489
00:55:22.260 --> 00:55:26.659
Teachers: It might be good, and if you'd also like to go and use the restroom, please do

490
00:55:27.170 --> 00:55:37.080
Teachers: got till about half-past 10, and again for those of you at home. If you want to ask a question or make a comment, just

491
00:55:37.730 --> 00:55:39.090
Teachers: press the

492
00:55:39.500 --> 00:55:42.800
Teachers: think they call it reaction button.

493
00:55:43.210 --> 00:55:44.290
Yeah.

494
00:55:45.660 --> 00:55:47.809
Teachers: Otherwise. Yes.

495
00:55:48.270 --> 00:55:50.060
yeah. Back.

496
00:55:54.120 --> 00:55:58.550
Teachers: My name is Bernard and

497
00:55:58.600 --> 00:56:08.639
Teachers: to ask my question. I'd like to borrow the image that used last night of this recycle

498
00:56:08.740 --> 00:56:11.910
Teachers: the 3 concentric cycle

499
00:56:12.810 --> 00:56:15.520
within the middle. The problem which

500
00:56:16.300 --> 00:56:21.780
Teachers: concerning myself in the second one.

501
00:56:21.970 --> 00:56:25.269
Teachers: me and the others, and the third one.

502
00:56:25.780 --> 00:56:27.000
Teachers: So

503
00:56:27.290 --> 00:56:31.080
Teachers: I can perfectly imagine and sense

504
00:56:32.530 --> 00:56:35.150
our imagination

505
00:56:35.630 --> 00:56:41.369
Teachers: and mindfulness before correctness. Whatever contemplative

506
00:56:41.790 --> 00:56:49.429
Teachers: virtues works for addressing issues in the first cycle, the one in the middle.

507
00:56:50.040 --> 00:56:51.990
I can also

508
00:56:52.270 --> 00:56:57.440
Teachers: understand how it works for the second cycle. and

509
00:56:59.440 --> 00:57:06.120
Teachers: in the second cycle we are going already very far, and we can have situations where

510
00:57:06.360 --> 00:57:08.269
Teachers: we can run for our life

511
00:57:08.480 --> 00:57:12.699
Teachers: life like your friends in in Israel.

512
00:57:13.730 --> 00:57:15.940
But in the third cycle

513
00:57:17.260 --> 00:57:20.149
Teachers: we are facing a kind of

514
00:57:20.250 --> 00:57:26.730
Teachers: anthropologic threat. It is the

515
00:57:26.840 --> 00:57:33.369
Teachers: energy crisis, the climate crisis. It is AI. It is

516
00:57:33.780 --> 00:57:44.380
Teachers: anything which is threatened our humanity. How do you think that imagination can work to address

517
00:57:44.740 --> 00:57:46.110
those issues

518
00:57:46.300 --> 00:57:48.320
Teachers: in the third cycle.

519
00:57:49.930 --> 00:57:59.199
Teachers: I think I would phrase it slightly differently. I can't see how we could address those crises without

520
00:58:00.250 --> 00:58:04.400
Teachers: the capacity to imagine an alternative.

521
00:58:04.870 --> 00:58:16.060
Teachers: or to imagine some kind of solution. And I don't think this will be something that would be so much a personal practice, my imagination me.

522
00:58:16.200 --> 00:58:21.859
Teachers: but I think it will have to be an imagination of a community.

523
00:58:22.880 --> 00:58:34.260
Teachers: a political imagination, in other words, something in which individuals come together to thrash out these problems. And this is what's happening. I feel

524
00:58:34.530 --> 00:58:40.110
Teachers: if you look at the, you know, various activist movements

525
00:58:40.520 --> 00:58:47.200
Teachers: were concerned with climate crisis, or whatever it might be.

526
00:58:47.830 --> 00:58:50.300
Teachers: so much any one person

527
00:58:50.600 --> 00:59:06.390
Teachers: whose imagination is is addressing these issues. But it's the fact that we can work together. So once again, I think it's a call for community. The people with shared concerns coming together.

528
00:59:06.610 --> 00:59:10.849
Teachers: There may always be one or 2 spark points.

529
00:59:11.360 --> 00:59:14.819
Teachers: I think of someone like Greater Toonberg, for example.

530
00:59:15.010 --> 00:59:22.980
Teachers: and it's probably going to come from the younger people, not from old fogeys like me. And so to hear those

531
00:59:23.100 --> 00:59:25.079
Teachers: those spark points.

532
00:59:25.420 --> 00:59:33.930
Teachers: But really it has to be a work. I think, that engages communities rather than individuals.

533
00:59:33.960 --> 00:59:36.370
Teachers: and those communities may

534
00:59:36.480 --> 00:59:46.190
Teachers: evolve or may organize themselves into explicitly political movements or economic movements or social movements.

535
00:59:47.360 --> 01:00:00.669
Teachers: and I think it also requires us a degree of humility to recognize that the scale of these issues is maybe not something that we can consider, you know, as solvable in the next

536
01:00:00.850 --> 01:00:02.350
Teachers: 5 years. Say.

537
01:00:02.880 --> 01:00:07.590
Teachers: I think we're confronted here with a long future.

538
01:00:08.360 --> 01:00:19.709
Teachers: and the imaginary, therefore, needs to be extended. Beyond, as you say, those first 2 circles, but also beyond the third circle, too.

539
01:00:19.760 --> 01:00:23.430
Teachers: it needs to include the past. It needs to include the future

540
01:00:23.760 --> 01:00:31.079
Teachers: which extends it in time, and I think the concerns that the level of threat

541
01:00:31.320 --> 01:00:32.770
Teachers: to humanity

542
01:00:32.940 --> 01:00:46.610
Teachers: is such is one that's not just of concern to our generation people on earth. Now, if anything, the consequences will affect numerous generations after

543
01:00:46.630 --> 01:00:51.710
Teachers: us, and therefore to somehow

544
01:00:51.910 --> 01:00:58.279
Teachers: you know. Get out of the inner circles the inner bubble of me and my friends and my fellow

545
01:00:58.390 --> 01:01:12.340
Teachers: Buddhist to whatever. and somehow extend that both over space and over time and In some ways, I think if we go back to Buddhism.

546
01:01:12.720 --> 01:01:30.199
Teachers: traditional Buddhism believes that Sansara has had no beginning, that there is an endless earlier rebirths that we've had, that go back almost infinitely, and a recognition that there's also endless

547
01:01:30.390 --> 01:01:43.710
Teachers: future rebirths that we can have that will go on indefinitely into the future. Now for many of us who consider ourselves secular Buddhists, we have difficulty with the idea of rebirth

548
01:01:43.770 --> 01:01:57.019
Teachers: and karma, and we tend to, maybe just put those politely to one side, or less politely to one side. But I think we might be risking, throwing out the baby with the bath water.

549
01:01:57.050 --> 01:02:26.139
Teachers: and by that I mean that we risk forgetting the sense of grandeur, the sense of great time spans and world systems that are implicit in the doctrines of Karma reincarnation. So the challenge, I think, for that is to imagine another way of representing to ourselves these vast expanses of time and space.

550
01:02:26.240 --> 01:02:31.850
Teachers: but not within the classic form of Indian cosmology.

551
01:02:32.020 --> 01:02:43.500
Teachers: and I think modern astrophysics, evolutionary biology. I think these fields of knowledge provide us with precisely that grand scale

552
01:02:44.530 --> 01:03:03.970
Teachers: the way we understand now from the Big Bang until the first forms of life on earth, until the evolution of creatures like ourselves, and the understanding that you know human beings are probably a very temporary, you know, form of life within this big picture.

553
01:03:04.000 --> 01:03:23.490
Teachers: To take that into consideration, too, to consider. You know, the time spans that will unfold on this earth until it becomes a red dwarf or becomes uninhabitable. So I wonder whether those we need to take those those images.

554
01:03:24.020 --> 01:03:36.799
Teachers: those pictures rather more seriously and incorporate them into our sense of this Dharma practice that we're doing now. So to replace Carmen rebirth

555
01:03:37.120 --> 01:03:45.439
Teachers: with evolutionary biology, astrophysics, cosmology, and so forth, and so on, I think, can actually enrich

556
01:03:45.960 --> 01:03:50.790
Teachers: and and provide us with a you know, a fray

557
01:03:51.210 --> 01:03:56.719
Teachers: that actually has the advantage of being somehow empirically verified

558
01:03:56.760 --> 01:03:58.069
Teachers: to some extent.

559
01:03:58.450 --> 01:04:05.339
Teachers:  so, and to thereby, you know, recover that sense of time

560
01:04:05.400 --> 01:04:11.119
Teachers: and space that is lost when you simply discard the notion of

561
01:04:11.300 --> 01:04:12.849
Teachers: rebirth and karma.

562
01:04:19.640 --> 01:04:33.160
Teachers: You were talking about the spectrum of hope and despair, and what the the mean might be, and what came up for me was some sort of acceptance.

563
01:04:33.390 --> 01:04:39.010
Teachers: And so I think

564
01:04:39.960 --> 01:04:55.669
Teachers: part of my way of of dealing with things is to kind of imagine the worst case scenario. I think that that might happen. And then, if it doesn't happen, then that's great. But if it does happen, how do you actually prepare yourself for that?

565
01:04:55.720 --> 01:04:57.990
Teachers: And so

566
01:04:59.710 --> 01:05:15.010
Teachers: my thinking has taken me to actually study nursing, to do palliative care to do training in pastoral care. How do we offer

567
01:05:15.320 --> 01:05:17.880
Teachers: support, care

568
01:05:17.900 --> 01:05:25.450
Teachers: for people who are dying and their families around them? So this is kind of the way that I'm

569
01:05:25.910 --> 01:05:44.700
Teachers: sort of preparing myself for what might be a really calamitous outcome. Because I think we have to be realistic, that where we are with climate change and all the science behind it. We're at the beginning of something that's unstoppable for the time being.

570
01:05:46.390 --> 01:05:52.289
Teachers: But maybe I'm missing something in my imagination that kind of

571
01:05:52.360 --> 01:05:59.239
Teachers: gives a different approach. I'm just wondering what you might have to say about that.

572
01:06:00.740 --> 01:06:03.819
Teachers: Well, the only thing II would say is that

573
01:06:05.550 --> 01:06:23.800
Teachers: perhaps part of the problem in these issues is our failure to be able to imagine some kind of other way of living. But of course, to imagine something is one thing, to somehow realize it

574
01:06:23.950 --> 01:06:27.559
Teachers: is something else, and we can have all kinds of nice ideas.

575
01:06:28.420 --> 01:06:39.140
Teachers: world peace, and so on and end of the fossil fuel era. But the real challenge is how you actually, individually and collectively.

576
01:06:39.170 --> 01:06:43.429
Teachers: you know, do something that might actually make a difference.

577
01:06:43.960 --> 01:06:53.010
Teachers: And I think yes, we also do need to be realistic and recognize that we also need to prepare ourselves, for.

578
01:06:53.450 --> 01:06:59.280
Teachers: you know a very likely outcome. given the way human beings are behaving right now.

579
01:06:59.690 --> 01:07:12.529
Teachers: but the danger with that is, we kind of just accept the status quo and just complacently say, well, we can't do anything about it. Let's just try and figure out how to care for people when they're living under. You know

580
01:07:12.590 --> 01:07:22.490
Teachers: incredible levels of heat and rising oceans and so on. I do think that needs to be part of it. But I do think we must be careful not to lose

581
01:07:22.510 --> 01:07:24.580
Teachers: sight of the

582
01:07:24.880 --> 01:07:27.440
Teachers: of the need to actually

583
01:07:27.690 --> 01:07:30.200
Teachers: imagine and act upon

584
01:07:31.560 --> 01:07:40.240
Teachers: what we've imagined in a way that stands some chance of making a difference, not the degree of difference we might hope for.

585
01:07:40.880 --> 01:07:49.250
Teachers: with a degree of difference that will at least prevent it, lead to it being less worse than it might otherwise be.

586
01:07:50.570 --> 01:07:54.660
Teachers: Thank you. Oh, okay.

587
01:07:54.860 --> 01:07:56.860
Teachers: Vivian. Oh.

588
01:07:56.960 --> 01:08:01.089
Vivien Langford: hello! Thank you for that, Stephen. That was a real masterclass.

589
01:08:01.270 --> 01:08:03.610
Vivien Langford: that long talk.

590
01:08:03.940 --> 01:08:06.409
Vivien Langford: I'd like to come back to the idea of Sangha.

591
01:08:06.570 --> 01:08:13.659
Vivien Langford: Martine came to our Sangha just before this, you know, few weeks go, and

592
01:08:13.850 --> 01:08:14.590
Vivien Langford: it

593
01:08:14.710 --> 01:08:29.330
Vivien Langford: was wonderful because people who were on the list of members, you know, arrived and came from far away, and I could see the absolute resource that Asanga is. Normally, we're a small group, but it's actually growing. Since

594
01:08:29.470 --> 01:08:42.279
Vivien Langford: we've sort of decided to do our best, you know. It's that courage that you mentioned. Just have a bit of courage. Don't take it as impermanent. If maybe it'll just dissolve this, Sangha. Maybe we can just

595
01:08:42.510 --> 01:08:57.560
Vivien Langford: give it a bit of energy, which is what Martine talked to us about. But going into the next year, I would like to see it continue, even if the numbers are small. But certainly we've got young people coming. It's not all people with grey hair, and I find it

596
01:08:57.569 --> 01:09:07.320
Vivien Langford: very wonderful each time the rich conversation that follows the talk and just the sense of meditation together. I just think there's something unique about it.

597
01:09:08.310 --> 01:09:16.609
Vivien Langford: whether it contributes to the greater well-being at all. I don't know. It just feels like it's something solid there. And

598
01:09:16.870 --> 01:09:18.329
Vivien Langford: I wanted to know

599
01:09:18.720 --> 01:09:25.300
Vivien Langford: what sort of curriculum you know what sort of framework you mentioned. Framework of thinking

600
01:09:25.319 --> 01:09:30.959
Vivien Langford: would be a good idea. I don't want an you know, a 10 point plan or an 18 fold

601
01:09:31.450 --> 01:09:49.750
Vivien Langford: thing to think about, or you know all these long lists of things that usually are a kind of curriculum. I feel that would be heavy, but and people are coming from different points of learning, too, and and different time like I'm retired. So I have a lot of time. But other people extremely busy and don't have time. But

602
01:09:49.830 --> 01:09:54.149
Vivien Langford: like, are there sangers in this secular tradition that have

603
01:09:54.270 --> 01:09:55.990
Vivien Langford: worked out like

604
01:09:56.200 --> 01:10:05.150
Vivien Langford: a path, and it could always be a loose one, where, if a guest speaker comes and talks about something else that will be good. But I'd like it not to be random. What do you think?

605
01:10:05.690 --> 01:10:19.169
Teachers: It's a good point, and I have to confess that it's not my strong suit, designing curricula and running educational programs?

606
01:10:19.600 --> 01:10:26.440
Teachers:  I think of myself more as a kind of a theologian, a theorist, as it were.

607
01:10:26.920 --> 01:10:41.720
Teachers: I, you know. But you know that's a that's a bit of a cop out. Answer. Aware of that. I do feel quite strongly that if we are to really engage with ideas

608
01:10:41.760 --> 01:10:50.530
Teachers: that are hopefully coherent, that are, you know, comprehensive in addressing the issues that we face.

609
01:10:50.660 --> 01:11:05.980
Teachers: we need to develop curricula. We need to develop study groups, we need to, you know, spend maybe more time thinking about these things, really thinking?

610
01:11:06.440 --> 01:11:17.400
Teachers: And of course people will say that they're busy, and they don't have time but again to question that too, or to get people to question that. I mean, if you really are concerned

611
01:11:17.850 --> 01:11:27.729
Teachers: about some of these issues we're talking about, maybe you can make that more of your priority, and that might be making certain sacrifices in your life.

612
01:11:29.120 --> 01:11:40.720
Teachers: and not just sort of going along with the flow. And that to me, is the question, to what extent are you really willing to prioritize

613
01:11:40.910 --> 01:11:59.840
Teachers: some of these concerns? We all accept that this is a major catastrophe for humankind. But we say, oh, well, I'm too busy. Next Thursday I've got to go to my, you know Pilates class or and so and I see this a lot. In fact, Tim brought this up.

614
01:12:00.090 --> 01:12:11.220
Teachers: You know, we have all these grand, you know, aspirations and ideals, but we maybe don't really make enormous amount of changes in how we actually live.

615
01:12:11.510 --> 01:12:16.970
Teachers: and I would hope that meditation and self-awareness and mindfulness

616
01:12:17.060 --> 01:12:21.430
Teachers: could be tools that will help us not only perhaps see our own.

617
01:12:21.920 --> 01:12:33.809
Teachers: you know the fact that we're not. Really. We don't really have the courage of our convictions in many ways, and to create communities and learning environments that can strengthen

618
01:12:34.120 --> 01:12:46.689
Teachers: our sense of of the importance of these issues, so that we might actually make some radical changes in how we live. and that might be at a cost of our own comfort and well-being

619
01:12:46.920 --> 01:12:47.830
Teachers: at some level.

620
01:12:48.330 --> 01:12:57.660
Teachers: and so many people that in history and even today that we admire are people who have been willing to actually, you know, put aside.

621
01:12:57.860 --> 01:13:00.429
Teachers: you know, conventional comforts.

622
01:13:00.970 --> 01:13:08.910
Teachers: I mean, this is virtually true with everyone that I can think of, that I admire is that they've willingly taken on hardship.

623
01:13:09.840 --> 01:13:16.609
Teachers: and I think if we're not willing to do that, then I think it's a really is a question of how

624
01:13:16.640 --> 01:13:18.570
Teachers: committed we really are

625
01:13:18.880 --> 01:13:21.210
Teachers: to these kind of issues.

626
01:13:21.540 --> 01:13:35.659
Teachers: And so any kind of training or educational program would not just be about providing more information. but more crucially about providing and the training in contemplative skills.

627
01:13:35.970 --> 01:13:48.520
Teachers: the training in practical skills, the raising of questions about how to actually organize ourselves. This will be covered later in the week, particularly by Winton.

628
01:13:49.660 --> 01:13:57.409
Teachers:  so yeah, your questions are very. It's a very good question, and I don't really have an answer for it. As things stand at the moment.

629
01:14:00.620 --> 01:14:23.539
Vivien Langford: I think so far we could. I just say one more thing. We I had once before done a course with the parameters. So II clutched at that, you know, to keep this group going. So I said, we'll start with that each week a different parameter, and that's how Martine gave the talk on energy, and that gave a little bit of a framework, and it was. It is very wonderful what is unleashed, because each person.

630
01:14:23.540 --> 01:14:37.709
Vivien Langford: you know, takes a different approach to it, and it has unleashed a kind of imagination among us, and I don't think everybody's politically. People are frightened of talking about politics, so it doesn't come up literally as political things. But I feel that

631
01:14:37.880 --> 01:14:46.910
Vivien Langford: if you have some sort of framework it might be just a very hmm modest framework. Not this, as I feel with Buddhism. There are so many very

632
01:14:46.920 --> 01:14:54.340
Vivien Langford: like. It's for monastics, you know, these long lists of things to learn. The novices, and so on. I just

633
01:14:54.560 --> 01:14:59.690
Vivien Langford: feel and attentively, I would like to just have something as a framework.

634
01:14:59.920 --> 01:15:00.770
Vivien Langford: and

635
01:15:01.290 --> 01:15:11.719
Vivien Langford: you know it will, it'll definitely unleash things. I trust that just as you say, you let go when you want to do some your art, you just let go of the anxiety about it, and it'll come.

636
01:15:12.840 --> 01:15:16.719
Teachers: Okay. Okay. Well, that sounds good. But

637
01:15:17.070 --> 01:15:34.259
Teachers: draw my mind. Oh, yeah, right. Thank you, Martin. I'm actually developing something. Well, not me. I'm not developing it so much. Other people are developing it on my behalf. But last year I gave an online course to a group in Germany

638
01:15:34.270 --> 01:15:37.359
Teachers: which we called mindfulness-based ethical living.

639
01:15:38.460 --> 01:15:44.720
Teachers: And that's now being developed into a program. And it's it's founded on mindfulness.

640
01:15:44.850 --> 01:15:46.270
Teachers: But it's not.

641
01:15:46.510 --> 01:15:51.359
Teachers: It's not focusing on mindfulness as a way to heal some pathology.

642
01:15:51.570 --> 01:15:53.599
Teachers: You know, stress or

643
01:15:53.820 --> 01:16:04.650
Teachers: cognitive or panic attacks with him, but is trying to frame a mindfulness training that has a positive outcome, namely, how to live ethically.

644
01:16:04.880 --> 01:16:19.700
Teachers: and it's structured around the 4 tasks. And this other and this roadmap thing that I've included in your handout. And and that's a program that hopefully next year will launch online

645
01:16:19.880 --> 01:16:26.129
Teachers: through the Buddhist Tfton in Heidelberg, in Germany. So if you're interested in that.

646
01:16:26.300 --> 01:16:37.600
Teachers: I can. Certainly we could certainly make available links, and that is an attempt to create a much more comprehensive program that goes on over a sustained period of time.

647
01:16:37.630 --> 01:16:40.410
Teachers: and in doing so helps form

648
01:16:40.480 --> 01:16:44.619
Teachers: a bonds of a community that are doing it together.

649
01:16:45.620 --> 01:16:48.400
Teachers: Yeah. So so thank you for reminding me much.

650
01:16:50.410 --> 01:17:11.789
Teachers: Yes, Tim. Sorry, Mike, or Oh, do you have a different? I was next. I was next already. Oh, I already had my hand up. I'm invisible down here, Stephen, I've got a kind of double barrel question. One is a clarification and a question based on my clarification. So am I correct in understanding that you take imagination to be the precursor to intention.

651
01:17:11.930 --> 01:17:16.000
Teachers: Yes, right fantastic, very interesting idea.

652
01:17:16.310 --> 01:17:32.680
Teachers: I wanted to know, though, in Buddhist ethics intention is incredibly important. It's one of the linchpins that differentiate from unskillful action. How do you see intention, which is very volitional.

653
01:17:32.870 --> 01:17:45.479
Teachers: contrasting or working alongside imagination, which we can imagine things and not intend to act on them, but when we intend we really the kind of the cogs are in motion, so to speak, so could you kind of help me tease that out.

654
01:17:46.250 --> 01:17:55.709
Teachers: Maybe, as I said in the talk, I feel that imagination is the context within which we can arrive.

655
01:17:55.800 --> 01:17:58.750
Teachers: and hopefully better choices

656
01:17:59.260 --> 01:18:12.250
Teachers: by imagining more possible outcomes, by imagining more clearly how other people will be infected by having a capacity also to imagine. You know, yeah, all of those things.

657
01:18:12.610 --> 01:18:24.259
Teachers:  I think sometimes in Buddhism intention is given too much priority. I'm going to touch on that tomorrow, so don't want to go into that in detail now.

658
01:18:24.460 --> 01:18:33.480
Teachers: I've often heard, but teachers say, you know, if your intention is good, then everything will follow. If you have the body cheater intention, then

659
01:18:33.660 --> 01:18:37.569
Teachers: that, I think is somewhat dangerous to think in those ways.

660
01:18:37.860 --> 01:18:41.229
Teachers: If you look at Songkopa.

661
01:18:41.250 --> 01:18:47.299
Teachers: who's the the the founder of the Gallup tradition in which I train.

662
01:18:47.410 --> 01:18:51.999
Teachers: He sees intention as as just one of 4 elements within an ethical

663
01:18:53.090 --> 01:18:58.330
Teachers: as the intention and object, the act and the outcome

664
01:18:59.430 --> 01:19:02.760
Teachers: have to be, in all considered, equally

665
01:19:02.880 --> 01:19:07.149
Teachers: intention is, of course, important, but you can have

666
01:19:07.180 --> 01:19:20.959
Teachers: the best of intentions and make a terrible mess of things, and, as we say in English, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, so I think an ethic that's too strongly weighted on intention

667
01:19:21.200 --> 01:19:37.680
Teachers: is liable to not connect sufficiently with the repercussions of actions in the world, and how they infect others, and also a conceit that if I'm operating out of a loving kindness, then it's a good act.

668
01:19:37.750 --> 01:19:39.680
Teachers: I think that's very naive.

669
01:19:40.050 --> 01:19:40.960
Teachers: Frankly.

670
01:19:41.250 --> 01:19:44.799
Teachers: I could have good intentions and do something really awful.

671
01:19:46.310 --> 01:19:59.789
Teachers: So I think we need to, instead of giving intention the sort of priority it sometimes has. We need to see it as one element amongst several others that together

672
01:19:59.980 --> 01:20:01.110
Teachers: condemned

673
01:20:01.350 --> 01:20:06.599
Teachers: be a framework within which we can make ethical choices

674
01:20:06.620 --> 01:20:08.750
Teachers: responsibly within

675
01:20:08.840 --> 01:20:11.450
Teachers: context that we understand

676
01:20:11.760 --> 01:20:15.529
Teachers: as well as possible. But we'll come back to that tomorrow.

677
01:20:15.760 --> 01:20:20.860
Teachers: Who was there. We'll get 2 mics going through the cue ATM. And who was Arthur?

678
01:20:22.650 --> 01:20:24.890
Teachers: Thanks, Stephen.

679
01:20:25.060 --> 01:20:26.320
Teachers: I

680
01:20:27.300 --> 01:20:36.200
Teachers: I found this morning's talk from you really quite a step change in my brain, because imagination has

681
01:20:36.430 --> 01:20:40.499
Teachers: tended to be a problematic word for me. I have not

682
01:20:40.760 --> 01:20:51.670
Teachers: been able to imagine what imagination means. Well, I probably have. But there's always been this fuzzy line between

683
01:20:51.680 --> 01:20:57.299
Teachers: imagination and fantasy and rumination overthink

684
01:20:57.370 --> 01:21:13.660
Teachers: and I today, when you talked about the Suta that it's sorry the practice that is in. I think the Tibetan tradition, where they are empathizing, imagining being in somebody else.

685
01:21:14.280 --> 01:21:18.120
Teachers: Suddenly the penny dropped for me there.

686
01:21:18.230 --> 01:21:28.500
Teachers: because I feel that, like we had a discussion about rumination in our discussion group yesterday morning, and how you can get a sticky problem like a stuck record.

687
01:21:29.530 --> 01:21:34.960
Teachers: Could you talk a little bit more to the middle way between knowing where imagination

688
01:21:35.260 --> 01:21:50.220
Teachers: ends and rumination stops without it being a binary solution. Well, I mean, that's kind of what I was trying to do in the talk actually was trying to, in a sense, swing the pendulum back to the middle.

689
01:21:51.190 --> 01:21:57.280
Teachers: I guess I had never heard about this practice of imagining being somebody else.

690
01:21:57.300 --> 01:22:15.499
Teachers: So maybe that was that empathizing pass oh, so that you hadn't heard that. No, oh, no, I hadn't sorry for everybody who had, but I hadn't. No, certainly in in the Tibetan tradition a lot of the practices are basically imagining you visualize stuff right?

691
01:22:15.700 --> 01:22:25.440
Teachers: There's a much great, there's a much more positive value valuing of the imagination. There's not much value of creativity.

692
01:22:26.000 --> 01:22:31.880
Teachers: That's another issue. But then no Buddhist tradition really pays much attention to creativity.

693
01:22:32.160 --> 01:22:48.099
Teachers: but imagination is is actively used in a lot of mahayana and Vajayana practices as very, you know, it's not a problematic thing at all. But at the same time they're fully aware that the mind can go wandering off into all kinds of

694
01:22:48.230 --> 01:22:49.929
Teachers: la la lands.

695
01:22:50.090 --> 01:23:00.890
Teachers: and can also. you know, get caught up in cyclical, ruminative thoughts. I mean, these are well understood as the danger side.

696
01:23:01.200 --> 01:23:12.219
Teachers: but I think often, maybe in the Vipassana community it's more widespread. Imagination tends to get negatively biased.

697
01:23:12.610 --> 01:23:15.810
Teachers: There's a broadly negative bias or suspicion about it

698
01:23:16.640 --> 01:23:21.160
Teachers: with some justification. Yes, the imagination can go all over the place.

699
01:23:21.180 --> 01:23:29.440
Teachers: But that's why it needs to be embedded within a framework of of stability and clarity and a clear set of values and a

700
01:23:29.490 --> 01:23:38.260
Teachers: communities holding. Then you can actually, really. I think it really can then become something very, very positive

701
01:23:38.620 --> 01:23:40.070
in your practice.

702
01:23:45.360 --> 01:23:46.510
Teachers: Lenore.

703
01:23:47.690 --> 01:24:06.010
Teachers: I ran leadership programs for many years, and we used to, if issues were coming up, and it wasn't right to write in the moment to address them, we'd put them in the parking lot. And so I want to raise an issue, maybe that we put in the parking lot. But it's already come up a couple of times. This issue of Sangha

704
01:24:06.360 --> 01:24:14.210
Teachers: Ruriko raised it on the first night. The question about in secular Dhamma, what replaces

705
01:24:14.610 --> 01:24:29.479
Teachers: the function of Sangha, which the question befuddled me at first, because my answer to it was Sangha. But then I realized she was probably talking about monastics living in monasteries. Sangha

706
01:24:29.620 --> 01:24:37.749
Teachers: and I've been running Hassanga for 15 years on the northern beaches of Sydney, and the issue of Sangha just came up again. About how do we harness

707
01:24:37.990 --> 01:24:40.309
Teachers: make useful.

708
01:24:40.490 --> 01:25:01.930
Teachers: Sangha? And I wonder if it's an issue that may be alive for a lot of people. So whether or not we might have time to talk about that at some point over the rest of the week, do we park that now there's probably some some wisdom and practical tactics. And what have you that can be shared

709
01:25:02.020 --> 01:25:04.849
Teachers: from among the group.

710
01:25:05.810 --> 01:25:16.489
Teachers: So, for example, in the question that was just asked, I could offer some experience from that. But I wonder if now is the right time? Should we really think?

711
01:25:16.940 --> 01:25:36.609
Teachers: Well, we've got 5 min here. I don't think we're going to cover it adequately, but I think you're right. It's a theme that's already raised its head. And it's clearly on many people's radar. I mean, I've also been. It's been flagged, and I've picked it up, too, and I've brought it into this talk, which I otherwise may not have done to be honest.

712
01:25:36.850 --> 01:25:42.930
Teachers: My sense is that as we continue through these things, particularly as we get towards the end.

713
01:25:43.060 --> 01:25:45.580
Teachers: I think it will naturally

714
01:25:45.900 --> 01:26:09.539
Teachers: become part of the conversation far more. But why don't we appoint you as guardian of the idea? You can bug us here. Thank you. We've got a couple of online questions as well.

715
01:26:09.580 --> 01:26:10.680
Teachers: The end?

716
01:26:11.170 --> 01:26:24.810
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): Yes. Hello! Can you hear me? Yes. Hello, Steven. Yes. So I'm going to start with the word praxis. So my question will be around praxis

717
01:26:24.860 --> 01:26:27.579
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): in relation to shipped to

718
01:26:27.730 --> 01:26:34.889
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): what you've talked about this last session and the the path of creativity.

719
01:26:34.960 --> 01:26:50.060
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): And just if I may express that I had an incredible sense of confirmation. Now, as a result of your talk, because earlier in the year I came to a place a stalemate

720
01:26:50.120 --> 01:27:04.309
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): within my dharma practice within the sungar I was involved with. and in a total sense of retaliation. I threw my hands up. And I just said, enough of all this self-analysis, this psychotherapy, this psychology.

721
01:27:04.640 --> 01:27:07.649
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): I need to do something different. So I wrote a play.

722
01:27:07.890 --> 01:27:12.279
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): and it was called Lilith, the evolution of a Difficult woman.

723
01:27:12.310 --> 01:27:22.889
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): And if you know about the archetype, Lilith, and of course, if you sort of then move on to the evolution of a difficult woman. I think it's fairly self explanatory.

724
01:27:23.020 --> 01:27:29.359
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): but what I realize and reflection is that that was the bridge that I was looking for, that

725
01:27:29.420 --> 01:27:50.210
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): that that the praxis that was required in order to move forward because I was really stuck, and I didn't know how to, but at the same time there were all those feelings of doubt, as you have mentioned with regards to Well, is this the. Is this the right thing to do, you know? Is it too ego orientated, etcetera?

726
01:27:50.290 --> 01:27:59.749
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): But I I'm so I just feel such a great sense of satisfaction on hearing your talk, and I guess to finish that

727
01:27:59.960 --> 01:28:06.810
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): I read in your article that you sent us pre-reading. You mentioned Praxis, and I've been very, very

728
01:28:06.990 --> 01:28:16.200
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): interested in practice for many, many years, being a person myself on the spectrum, and also working with children with autism, and recognizing that praxis.

729
01:28:16.310 --> 01:28:24.470
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): The ability to to make ideas happen and become something is something that we

730
01:28:24.520 --> 01:28:43.909
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): need, some, a lot of guidance and and so I was just wondering if you'd like to make some comments about Praxis, which, of course, has been talked about in the with the Greek philosophers as well. It's a very important part of what they include in their discussions.

731
01:28:44.860 --> 01:28:51.089
Teachers: Well, thank you very much, Anna, is it, Leanne Leanne?

732
01:28:51.510 --> 01:29:08.969
Teachers: Well, I completely sympathize with what you're saying, and it echoes other feedback I've had over the years from people who have read my books and stuff. But one thing I didn't mention in the talk which you brought up is. It's not just about appreciating

733
01:29:08.980 --> 01:29:11.980
Teachers: literature and theatre and art. It's about making

734
01:29:12.130 --> 01:29:17.839
Teachers: literature and theater and art. And my sense is that if

735
01:29:18.090 --> 01:29:31.120
Teachers: Buddhism in general secular Buddhism in particular, is unable to find a way to express itself through the arts, then I think it will always remain in a relatively small

736
01:29:31.310 --> 01:29:35.359
Teachers: circle of people who are interested in certain ideas.

737
01:29:35.440 --> 01:29:44.650
Teachers: I think it's wonderful that you've written a play. and I would hope that we could form communities that wouldn't just be studying stuff.

738
01:29:44.680 --> 01:29:46.789
Teachers: who would actually be creating stuff

739
01:29:46.890 --> 01:29:56.560
Teachers: and plays which you can do, you know, with a small cast, relatively short text is something you can do. It's something you can.

740
01:29:56.600 --> 01:30:17.689
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): Well, I actually performed it myself. It was a one woman show, so it was sort of a monologue. So it was. I created the character, the costume, the music, you know. It was dance, there was movement, there was, there was poetry, and there was a text or a do a a narrative that I wrote as well. So I performed the whole thing and did 9 performances. So yeah, it was a huge undertaking

741
01:30:17.690 --> 01:30:35.419
Teachers: that's fantastic, and and II would hope there'd be more of that. And also, you know, writing novels, for example, or you know, any kind of art form that is able to speak to a community that's not familiar with, or even interested in Buddhist ideas.

742
01:30:35.590 --> 01:30:51.029
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): because it communicates beyond concepts. In that way. It certainly did, because it was an archetypal. It was a personal. It was, I mean, it came through me. It was like you were talking about the creative process. It came through so easily.

743
01:30:51.700 --> 01:30:59.900
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): but it was personal, but it was collective, and therefore it was very profound and relatable was the feedback that I got.

744
01:30:59.960 --> 01:31:06.310
Teachers: Oh, fantastic, wonderful! Now you have now many, many more.

745
01:31:06.320 --> 01:31:12.750
Liane (Gumbaynggirr country): But can you just finish off by just mentioning the about praxis, please, if that's relevant.

746
01:31:13.610 --> 01:31:28.150
Teachers: Well, yeah, I think everything that we're talking about here is really about praxis. It's the the Vita activa. If you wish is about moving into praxis. It's about recognizing that ideas.

747
01:31:28.310 --> 01:31:40.370
Teachers: meditations and so forth, can only take you so far. And they're never, really they never. They're not realized in the literal meaning of that word made real

748
01:31:40.610 --> 01:31:50.710
Teachers: until they're embodied in some kind of practice, some kind of practice. And that's possibly the most challenging part of our work really

749
01:31:50.720 --> 01:31:54.500
Teachers: is to convert theory into praxis.

750
01:31:55.260 --> 01:31:59.089
Teachers: And without that, I think we'll we'll have minimal impact on

751
01:31:59.620 --> 01:32:01.449
Teachers: the wider world.

752
01:32:02.300 --> 01:32:08.020
Teachers: And that's a good point to stop. Wonderful. Thank you. sah. Thank you very much, Leanne.

753
01:32:08.480 --> 01:32:19.599
Teachers: There were a number of questions after that, so we might have to pick them up in the future. Yeah. Oh, okay, all right. So why don't we start the next? What is the next session?

754
01:32:20.130 --> 01:32:28.779
Teachers: It's meditation. At 12 the next year there's a meditation at 12, or there's a session, a talk and dialogue session at 2 15.

755
01:32:28.920 --> 01:32:39.750
Teachers: Alright! Well, those of you online who haven't had a chance to ask your questions. Please hold them for a later occasion, either with Winton or with Lenore

756
01:32:40.280 --> 01:32:41.380
Teachers: myself.

757
01:32:41.790 --> 01:32:46.139
Teachers: and it's also a good chance they'll so they'll answer themselves

758
01:32:47.470 --> 01:32:53.070
Teachers: if you think about them and let them just just percolate.

759
01:32:55.710 --> 01:32:59.190
Teachers: Thank you very much. It's coffee now, right.