Seeing That Frees: Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising

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That one, for me, for example, takes me automatically to a very, very deep level of unfabricating. For someone else, they might not find that argument convincing, or they might not be able to work it quite dexterously into meditation. Maybe something else works. But basically a rational argument has to be woven in to the present moment meditation with all that delicacy and subtlety, and then it can function really, really powerfully.

Rob was the first to admit that his teachings weren’t for everyone or even necessary. So long as there was eros, love, a movement of the soul, it doesn’t matter what you call it or whether you even know it’s there. He wasn’t trying to start a new religion. Yet for many people he voiced a crucial insight: that the profound teachings of emptiness give rise to the possibility of holding different perspectives on reality for different purposes and cultivating a range of qualities which enrich and deepen the journey of life. I don’t know how to reconcile the creative tensions between innovation and tradition. Maybe it’s always just a tension. However, I do know I’m grateful to Rob for his teachings and his way of teaching. They have expanded and enriched the way I practice and conceive of practice and I’m sure they have impacted many individuals and communities beyond Gaia House and beyond even the Buddhist Sangha. So that was part of the reason why I put these different approaches in the book. That’s the main reason. I think it kind of shores up the foundations and the thrust of the emptiness seeing. But people are also very different, and I find that question of what is convincing to different people and that there won’t be a universal there – I find that extremely interesting, both practically as a teacher but also more philosophically. So all the practices in the book, as far as I remember, if you engage them – whether they’re analytical meditations or what we’re calling more fully experiential, phenomenological – to some degree or other they will support, they will engender, the fading of perception, because they’re not fabricating. Because the ways of looking are part of what fabricates, they’re part of what stitches reality together – this object, that object, this self, that self, and also time. So any of these meditations, what we’re calling phenomenological right now, or analytical, they basically form ways of looking that will, to some degree or other, create more fading – or allow more fading we should say, more accurately. ANTONIA DORTHEA SUMBUNDU has been practicing meditation for more than 30 years and has had the good fortune to practice and study with a number of great teachers in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and Insight Meditation tradition. Originally trained as clinical psychologist, Antonia has had a long term interest in clinical applications of meditation. She has been teaching and lecturing on MBCT internationally for many years as a trainer and supervisor for Oxford Mindfulness Centre before shifting to teach meditation in a broader context and serving as a dharma teacher for an international meditation community. In 2010, she was awarded a Master of Studies in MBCT by the University of Oxford and in 2022 she completed the Bodhi College Dharma Teacher Training program.Michael: We’re creating two categories here. Are there other categories of seeing that work in this way also?

Everyone has off-moments, and we’ll always try to be in friendly dialogue with you if a problem arises with one of your contributions. But we reserve the right to remove posts and comments (or even suspend user accounts) when we feel these guidelines are not observed. But I remember getting the idea of that from him. It’s a certain translation of the word saṅkhāra, fabrication. The experiment thing, I think…I don’t know, maybe it’s just a kind of personality type I have. I was a jazz musician for a long time. It was my work before I was a full-time Dharma bum. I think that kind of idea of improvising and being creative and trying things out, it’s just, it’s kind of my type, maybe, to a certain extent. ROB BURBEA (1965-2020) was Gaia House’s much-loved resident teacher for 10 years, from 2005 to 2015 when he had to leave after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Listen to one of River's talks on Dharma Seed: The Story of Ptolemy the Tortoise and Mettā (Duration 46:24) A year before he died Rob Burbea expressed his wish that a foundation be set up to house and protect the extensive body of work he would be leaving as his Dharma legacy. HAF was established by three of Rob's students in 2019 for this purpose. HAF also exists to support the teachers and sangha who are engaging with Rob's teachings.ZOKETSU NORMAN FISCHER is a poet and Zen Buddhist priest. For many years he has taught at the San Francisco Zen Center, the oldest and largest of the new Buddhist organizations in the West, where he served as Co-abbot from 1995-2000. He is presently a Senior Dharma Teacher there as well as the founder and spiritual director of the Everyday Zen Foundation, an organization dedicated to adapting Zen Buddhist teachings to Western culture. We can do that with different intentions. So, for example, one might do that with mettā practice or lovingkindness – I decide to see this person in a certain way; I play with that way of looking that sees them in a certain way for the sake of mettā or whatever. But I can also do that for other reasons. So I can broaden the scope of why I’m doing it; it’s not just for the release of obvious suffering. Does this make sense? One of her particular passions is exploring how wisdom teachings can foster appropriate responses to the challenges of our time, and Kirsten sees her involvement in activism as an important expression of her practice. Kirsten is co-initiator of the “Dharma Action Network for Climate Engagement” ( DANCE) and supporting teacher of Freely Given Retreats.

But having said all that, what is emptiness? As you said, it’s an impossible question, because I find the way I speak or what I might say is very much dependent on my sense of who I’m talking to, whether I speak more poetically or more logically or more polemically or whatever. This feels like a bit of a blank right now when you’re asking me, in terms of who’s listening and what kind of personalities they are, and what speaks to them. So besides Thanissaro Bhikkhu, what other resources did you find that helped you do this long process of investigation into emptiness?

CARL FOOKS has been practising in Mahāyāna and Theravāda traditions since the late 1980’s, starting with Rinzai Zen before settling on the Mahasi tradition in 2007. He has been leading groups since 2011 and teaching retreats at Satipanya and Gaia House since 2014. He has an MA in Buddhist Studies. VIMALASARA ( VALERIE MASON-JOHN MA - hon doc) is a public speaker and master trainer in the field of conflict transformation, leadership and mindfulness. They are also the author of ten books and the Co-Founder of Eight Step Recovery, an alternative to the 12-step program for addiction. They were featured at TEDxRenfrewCollingwood, where they gave a talk entitled " We Are What We Think", which outlined a course of action we can take to work on the global epidemic of bullying. Rob's teenage years saw the relationship with his father become increasingly difficult and stormy as he explored his own nascent spirituality, particularly through music, nature and solitude. Rob discovered his love of the guitar, and was listening to a lot of classical guitar music as well as Jimi Hendrix and others. At eighteen Rob got a place to study physics at Oriel College, Oxford, but changed his degree to psychology after a trip to India during which he became interested in the mind and consciousness. While in his second year at Oxford, Rob attended his first meditation class and heard about the Buddhist 'five precepts'. He took all of them into his daily life without hesitation, reflecting later - 'they immediately made sense to me'. Even some people who are committed Dharma practitioners, they’re just not going to be. I feel that’s fine. I wouldn’t even judge that. I’m not interested in converting anyone to anything. There were times when I did feel more fired up and that this is how we need to understand the Buddha’s teachings, or this is much more helpful, this will go deeper, this will make sense of everything. I just feel less inclined to do that right now.

Rob's practice deepened greatly during the decade he'd been in America, and wanting to devote more time to the Dharma he returned to the UK for a year in 1998, living in London with his mum and going to Gaia House retreat centre in Devon for short retreats as often as he could. Rob then returned to the States to embark on his PhD in composition at Brandeis, continuing to sit retreats whenever possible. On a solitary retreat in the woods during this time, practising and deepening in the jhānas, Rob realized that the fantasy or archetype of the monk was becoming stronger in him, and he began to wonder if he should actually ordain in the Theravadan tradition. VENERABLE CANDA THERI encountered the Dhamma in 1996 in India and practised intensive meditation, sitting and serving scores of Vipassana retreats, before ordaining in Burma in 2006. She took full 'bhikkhuni' ordination with her teacher Ajahn Brahm in Australia in 2014 and for the last eight years, she and Ajahn Brahm have been developing the UK charity Anukampa Bhikkhuni Project, which will support Britain's first Forest Monastery for women wishing to train toward bhikkhuni ordination. Rob Burbea, who died aged 54 earlier this month, was a Dharma teacher loved and valued by many of us in the Triratna community. His clear teachings on emptiness and the imaginal may prove to be of great significance for the development of Dharma traditions in the West. Rob was steeped in the Insight meditation tradition in the USA and Europe. He was also, among other things, a classical and jazz guitarist, a climate activist and a lover of Jewish and Christian mysticism. I met Rob just once on a Buddhafield Yatra shortly before he took up residence as a teacher at Gaia House in 2004. His sensitivity, playfulness and sheer love of the Dharma was evident in the short talks he gave around the campfire after a days walking. Michael: Yeah. This is fascinating. You are preaching to the choir here of meta-rationality or metaconceptuality. We talk about that on the show quite a bit, particularly with David Chapman. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with his work, but he’s a Vajrayāna practitioner with quite a large body of work describing meta-rationality, which is essentially what you just described – being able to switch conceptual frameworks based on what’s most useful, most beautiful, most helpful, most whatever right now, and do that very fluidly. Since we were both guitar players, both born in the U.K. and shared a love of Pat Metheny, Monty Python and Indian food, it became obvious early on that we were going to be great friends. At that time, we were studying improvisation ( he was a performance major, and my degree is in Jazz Composition ) loved going to local clubs to listen to jazz, eat at local restaurants, and spent time taking long walks where we enjoyed laughing at absurdity, reveled in the joys of unpredictability, and stayed loose and free. He was wound tighter than I was, but his tension was balanced by my release, and my desultoriness was reeled in by hisfocus.

Path of the Imaginal (Longer Course)

Rob: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Basically that’s the whole premise of the book. We can divide ways of looking into two broad camps. There are ways of looking that kind of keep suffering and dis-ease and whatever objects and selves are involved in that suffering, they keep it solid and real-seeming and there, or they make it even stronger and more intense. We’ve got those kinds of ways of looking in, kind of broadly speaking, one camp. And the other kinds of ways of looking are ways that fabricate less, that cause the fading – to some degree or other – of the suffering, the sense of self, the sense of things. Caroline Jones's talks given at the Insight Meditation Center in December 2020: Contemplating Impermanence, Part 1. December 2020 (Duration 20:54) I think I mentioned before that the title has potentially a double meaning, with the emphasis on ‘that’ – so Seeing ‘ That’ Frees, ‘that’ being either the Unfabricated, the Deathless, or emptiness. So that’s there. That meaning is there, as well. But in a way, the way I would conceive of the whole thing is that the freedom that’s possible is even deeper and wider than seeing the Unfabricated, seeing the Deathless. The sort of primary title is more as you kind of interpreted it yourself earlier, Michael, ‘ Seeing’ That Frees, ways of looking that liberate. What the book unfolds is that, in the end, what we’re left with is just this range of ways of looking, and this kind of possibility of play and art to conjure, to weave, different experiences, different senses of self, of world, knowing that it’s all empty. Because it’s all empty, we have that freedom. So that goes beyond even a particular kind of seeing, seeing ‘that’ frees. You can access all of Rob's talks, videos, interviews and podcasts here: https://hermesamara.org/resources/all Please be courteous at all times. If you’re engaged in any kind of discussion, be as prepared to listen as you are to express yourself. Remember that there’s always a real person behind a computer/device screen, and they are likely quite different from you.