good evening everyone so we have a a short time this evening to look at the some of the general principles of this path called suction and then do a little bit of practice at the end means the great completion or the great inclusion when the word great is used in this context it means empty or open it means it's not about some special entity some god or divine being or fundamental reality it's pointing to the mysterious process by which we manifest moment by moment out of an ungraspable openness and this state which is our own state is complete in as much as all the experiences with that we have arising and passing arising and passing are immediately present and then gone so we live on the cusp of this wave which never breaks we're just on this opening and opening and opening so i'll say something about this in terms of the traditional categories of view meditation conduct and result so the view is that from the very beginning our own mind as it is has been pure pure here means uncontaminated by anything so we're used to having thoughts feelings sensations hopes and fears our moods expand and contract there's all kinds of movement which we take to be ourselves we maintain the sense of self-identity through our selective attention and our editing we highlight the features which seem to confirm our sense of who we are and diminish the impact or intensity of the factors which don't confirm our sense of who we are when we become aware of that we start to see that we are in a process of constant construction that is like being a child on the edge of the sea where the sand is very soft and wet and you have your little bucket and you fill it with sand you turn it upside down and it just slowly dissolves onto the rest of the sand so everything we construct in life gradually fades away whether it's work situations relationship situations the shifting patterns of what we experience cannot be frozen no matter how hard we try so the purity of the mind is the fact that these pulsations or moments of experience are present without leaving a trace traditional example for this is the mirror that a mirror on the wing of a car over a journey will show hundreds of thousands of reflections and images and yet it will be fresh at the end of the journey everything else in the car will be tired including the driver but the mirror stays fresh and open for the next thing that arises usually we take on an accretion we get layered with the stresses of the day with remnants of conversations we've had with people with plans and so on we get full of stuff so the view is that we the person who feels that they are full of stuff is a false identity or a delusion which is generated by a lack of clarity as to our own ground that our base is space our base is ungraspable openness but when we are not attentive to that when we don't relax and open into that we tend to fixate on stuff and then we select the staff and build up pictures of who we are how we think we should be other people's expectations of who we should be and that keeps us very very busy and not only is there the busyness of the moment but as we find ourselves repeating patterns developing habit formations we find that there is an intensification of our investment in our projects and this investment is what is meant by karma karma is the belief that things are real that they are important and that i have to do them and this means that when you finish something because you're so invested in it there's like a kind of wobble you've added too much energy into it and so there's a kind of judder and that reverberation continues through time so even if you stop doing something a habit like smoking cigarettes if you got a bit drunk at a party you might find yourself trying to catch a cigarette off someone else because that pattern would remain dormant inside you you haven't smoked for 10 years but still you could because the pathway hasn't entirely vanished so the view is that in order to free ourselves from this endless reverberation this ricocheting and like being stuck in a pinball machine bouncing off stimuli creating investments of importance we don't have to try hard this is a fundamental understanding of suction because the mind is pure it has never ever been marked or conditioned or limited by any pattern we have so we may feel what i'm like this i know me and my people who know me they'd know i'm like this therefore this pattern is me for a while you weren't like that when you were born nor when you were five years of age know when you were 15. our egoic formation is always deceiving us about our changes because the ego is our sense that i am a consistent point of reference i exist as me and i have always been me i things have happened i met people been closed broken up and so on all kind of stories but fundamentally i am myself so this is a an obscuration or a false belief which we are held enthralled by you were under the power of it how did it come about the traditional teaching say it just occurred it's like a magical formation it has no meaning it just happened on the basis of it happening one first thought the thought of substance something from something we have subject and object an experiencer of the something and there's something which is experienced and subject and and objects start to vibrate together like a damaru like a two-headed drum and this sends off all kinds of patterns of interest and evolution and we end up experiencing our complex world the fundamental basis of it is our rarification that we experience entities we look around our world and we see the walls in the room we're in decorations carpets cups and so on each of these we perceive as something i see what is there i know who i am and i know where i live and i know what i have in my house my possessions i am a knower of things there's a certain power to that but of course there are many many things we don't know so we're like a little glow worm with a small arena of illumination and surrounded by a vast darkness but this light the light of knowledge is like one of these torches that you have to keep squeezing in order to keep the light going you have to work at it all the time that's why at night you fall asleep you go unconscious and it's as if there's nothing at all till you wake up maybe with some dreams in the middle so the view is to just to give us the sense our mind is like the sky infinite open and bright the sun rises in the sky the rays of the sun spread out and we have this infinite illumination inside that we have a bubble of self-identification and this bubble keeps turning and that's our life our individual existence what's inside the bubble of our self is space because when we have a thought it arises in the space of the mind when we have a sensation it arises in the space of the body there are many many different spaces and they're all like theater stages there's arenas on which experience arises all experiences arise and pass almost instantaneously nobody's causing them to arise nobody's removing them there is no creator god and there is no final purpose that we have to strive for when we have a sense of purpose means subject focused on object i will go to the shops before they close i will make sure to set my alarm clock for the morning there is an aim and an achiever of the aim the ego self is an agent now the meditation that we do is very very simple it's simply to sit as i believe from the little conversation i had with geo that this is how you sit you just sit in a very open way and whatever comes comes whatever goes goes so we experience thoughts feelings arising they seem to be arising in our territory so we can claim them to be our thoughts that feeling that this is arising in my mind somehow brings a proprietorial sense that i must be the owner of this thought and if i'm the owner i should make sure i have quite nice thoughts and so there's always a tendency to tidy them up to edit them to direct them in some way so the view of the open unborn skylight mind is a pure awareness which is not resting on anything and which is free of any inherent need to have an intention it is not a doer it's not about something it's pure illumination there is this and this and this and this when we think this is happening to me or i need to do that then you have subject and object running round and round and round like two baby squirrels chasing each other this goes on and on and on so in the practice you want to relax and allow whatever is arising to come usually for this kind of practice we have our eyes open we rest our gaze in space whether it's a huge space outside in the summertime or it's a small space space is space letting the gaze rest in space and then doing nothing the one who does is a form of the energy of the mind the energy of the mind is like the wind blowing through the sky the wind is also almost ungraspable you see it not directly but indirectly when it moves the clouds or ruffles the leaves in the tree so from the sky you have the wind and then the wind leads to fire to water and then to earth and most of the time we conceptualize our experience in terms of earth this happens i want this i don't want that and and that carry a density which is not actually inherent to them it is projected from our longings our beliefs our value when we have a project at work it becomes important for us we put a lot of time and energy into it if you were to take it out and go into a shop and say how much money will you give me for my report i said yeah why would i give you any money nothing what is it it's rubbish for you it's very precious for them it's just pieces of paper with writing on it when we see this again and again we realize that the brightness of the world the shining quality of the world is our own projection but because we have selective attention because we have bias because we go to the world not in a fresh open way the patterning of our ignoring or attending brings a topology to the world peaks and valleys bright patches and things which are seemingly forever in the dark and so we lack a panoramic vision now when we sit in meditation we experience that some thoughts and feelings some sensations really seem to grasp us and others we don't really care about why is this because of how we have become conditioned to allocate value we don't see the intrinsic value we see the pattern of our own artificial contrived constructive value and this creates a kind of echo chamber in which our thoughts are returned to us as if they were valid and we of course we are human beings certainly in this life we talk to each other and in language we generate this web of confirmation of the truth of how we are so the difficulty of meditation is to allow ourselves to do nothing to become irrelevant to become redundant this can bring up a kind of basic anxiety as if it's going to be a nihilistic passage into annihilation i'll be nothing at all i'm going to vanish into some great space of nowhereness i i've got to hang on to my existence this fear arises because the ego self holds itself apart from the field of experience although we breathe in moment by moment we need to eat and drink we are participating through our belonging our metabolic our organ organismic belonging to this environment our conceptualization sets us as something apart from it so if you dissolve the ego you're still here in the world but you start to see that your belonging in the world is not me and the world but me world arising together in non-duality non-duality means not one and not two it's both and the there is a togetherness which is not a homogenization the more we feel at home in the world we are more tolerant of how things are because it's just disappearance and just disappearance and we have hopes and fears and thoughts and worries they come and they go and when we see there is no actually no individual self that they're referring to then the impact of good days and bad days thins and thins and thins and so we become more spacious more at ease in ourselves this experience is known as clarity which means that nothing has changed the world functions you get up you clean your teeth and so on who is the one who is cleaning their teeth that's not a question to be solved by some kind of cognition when you're cleaning your teeth teeth and cleaning are arising together when you put your shoes on your hands your body your spine arches to put the shoes on and you find that each moment has an internal coherence as things arrive in the right place at the right time this is the spontaneous completion the intuitive completion of ourselves instead of having to work hard to make things happen we find that because we are no not so preoccupied we have more attention to phenomena and so we can work with circumstances with what's arising if you have less of a menu in your mind if you've got less of an agenda and lesser fixed ways of doing things then the freshness of the moment is the potential of all that can be utilized to bring forward and manifest bring forward and manifest whatever that would be so in that way thoughts sensations and feelings become in the service of illumination they are the blossoming or the rays of energy arising out of the infinite spaciousness of the mind and we start to see my mind is like the mirror empty of self content and yet always showing radiant display the mirror keeps showing and showing all kinds of different patterns and in the mirror of awareness self and other arise together what i call i me myself what i take my seemingly separate self to be is one reflection in the mirror arising together with other reflections whether i'm sitting or cooking or walking or talking it's never just me it's always me and because the environment and the individual arise and have the same nature they are the revelation of the potential of the mind which arises with particular patterns for us as human beings the world patterns in a particular way when we look outside and we see the birds in the garden the world is patterning for them in a completely different way many of the things which are figural for uh a robin are not figural for a pigeon the pigeon has a big heavy stupid body and the robin has a very light friendly little body so they what they see what they can find is very different in the back garden here there is a little food feeder with some seeds in it and the robin arrives and he eats seeds and the big fat pigeon sits underneath the feeder like a beggar waiting for some drops to fall from the table it would look like the pigeon is the king of the world but they can't get in so when you see the world you see oh everything is just exactly as it is not fixed but in display patterns of luminous display arising from causes and conditions each of which is arising from causes and conditions and all of them are this ceaseless unfolding of the potential of the ground the open empty mind shows itself in infinite ways so that our conduct in the world how we proceed is through conversation through communication through allowing ourselves to be touched and moved by the events of the world it's not about becoming a solitary yogi in a cave if you watch the news and you see the state of the children palestinian children or in yemen or in many african countries you're weak it's so sad when you see the protesters in myanmar being shot you weep it's sad it's awful and then it's something else comes and something else comes if you're fully present in the awful moment you have full compassion and you can respond the key point is something else happens and something else happens if you are going to be open and fresh to the moment the enemy is preoccupation if you hang on to something and brood about it and go over it again and again you're living in a mental tunnel you're neither deeply relaxed in yourself nor are you freely participating in the world but you're just going in this labyrinth of recollection and plans and hopes and fears so our conduct is to release ourselves from that and to be present moment by moment in the fresh co-emergence of our body moving with that of other people doing whatever we do there is no fixed agenda we are already here in life as it is the openness of the mind the bright shining clarity of the mind and the unique moment by moment participation that we embody these three are inseparable so however your body emerges that is the display of the open ground so rather than trying to correct ourselves in order to become a better kind of person which is a kind of strange notion if i'm going to make myself a better kind of person i am the builder of myself and as we know all constructions have a limited endurance they fall apart again so self-construction is a way of hiding ourselves from ourselves the very desire to better ourselves to better the world becomes a way of not seeing the actuality of how experience emerges from the ground so the path is luminosity the path is to say stay close to the light of the ground as it presents with all the phenomena which are revealed to us our eyes our eyes can only see light the eye cannot see motor cars and trees the mind interprets light as things our ears can only hear sound but we interpret the sound as music or people having a fight or whatever so when we start to see the naked fresh potential of the world is being cooked according to the recipe book of my cultural fixations my neurotic fixations my egoic fixations we can put down the cookbook for a while and just stay present with the revelation with what is received i don't have to be so busy life will continue without me and i don't have to wait till i'm dead to find that out the less i do the more i receive and when we receive more we find that we are being energized and resourced by each moment so this is the basic orientation observing that what we need is already here through our open fresh participation and the result of that is that we stop driving ourselves it doesn't mean that you can't work hard or if you have projects you want to fulfill you can do them but in the manner of a dream you can have what is effort effort is a mobilization of energy but it doesn't have to be serious seriousness is a kind of overburdened heaviness in which true value and true meaning has been put into something which actually will fade seriousness as we see in the world politics all the time makes it makes for an over investment in limited projects which leads to the identification of those who don't agree with my project has been my enemy and quickly leads to war there are so many sites of violence in the world today because people know these other people are my enemy they are trying to undermine me and kill me why would they do that because very very few people live in a shared world they start with number one i me myself and then in the series of concentric circles going out my lovers my family and so on until we reach those i don't know and those i don't want to know and i'd be quite happy if they were dead and so fairly skilled at annihilating people so pachimbo the great inclusion brings everything into one great circle one great bubble of light and then we see oh all these divisions that i make friend enemy desirable undesirable this is just rippling moments of the energy of the mind here and gone what i love in this moment not so interesting in the next moment i am fickle so if i am fickle i should not pretend to be serious very helpful to be fickle because then you are labile you are moving and moving and moving and since you were born you were moving when you were in your mother's womb you were moving we are movement and move excuse me and movement is not solid and it's not serious either so this is the basis of our suction practice so we sit probably as you do in a very simple way but just not as an intention not as a direction but as a kind of mood have the sense of space we open to space space is our home let's say this space of the spaciousness of potential from which we emerge in different ways for each of us when we awoke in the morning we could in no way have given an accurate account of our day how we would have been walking who we would have met on the street who we would have been talking to if you had a zoom conference how how the conversation would have gone what the conclusions would have been we don't know our life was revealed to us our life is always revealed to us so we participate in the shared field of revelation rather than being an individual agent who has to push an elbow and get our little space in the sun space is the mother space is our basis we have space it's just that we're not so so sure how to recognize space to awaken to space to be part of the space we are the blossoming of space moment by moment so when we do the practice relax open and allow whatever comes to come with our eyes open so the senses are not blocked we're not wanting to make a big barrier between inside and outside so that we can see that outside and inside are simply patenting in the field of revelation there is a a circle of revelation which is always there whether we turn to the right or the left or up or down there is just this and just this and that this includes me we are always within so maybe we can just do a little sitting just now uh there are lots of extra bits you can learn about the practice but the most important is release the energy which vibrates as the impulse and the need to do something so whenever you find yourself being busy in the practice release yourself in a long slow out breath and there you are and what you take yourself to be will show itself as unreliable ever-changing our formation is momentary this is the middle way it's not that we don't have formation it's not just nothing at all but the formation or the pattern which arises is just here for an instant so we are always moving in this wonderful limpet sea of disclosure and disclosure self arising and self-liberating so that's what we sit with so maybe we sit a little bit just now okay so one of the things we attend to is to have the transition between sitting practice and getting up and moving around and being with other people to have that transition as simple as possible we sit in open clarity and we move in open clarity when we find ourselves re-centering into our body as i am this person we want to just be aware oh i am falling under the power of a thought i am identifying myself on the basis of a linked series of concepts i exist i have a body i am not you we hold on to these concepts they generate a little cocoon around us which gradually separates us from what's around so simply seeing the thought which defines me has already gone the feeling which defines me has already gone we don't need to block what is arising but just to avoid grasping and building and constructing so that whatever occurs is self-arising and self-liberating and then we have the seamless movement of sitting and moving and talking and life moves on within this luminous sea of light so that's all i have to say today i hope i wish you well with your practice you've been meeting together for quite a long time geo was telling me so i hope you've really enjoying it and get some good benefit to make your lives more easy so i say goodbye