Hello. Well, I know that some people this evening here have divided loyalties, so I think it's important to acknowledge that, as we speak, Paula Radcliffe is in the process of the 10,000 meters, so this talk is dedicated to Paula Radcliffe. So, standing on empty, so I don't know how I'm going to get on with this, actually, at all. Anyway, we'll see, because I can't see what I'm trying to read. Well, the last few days I've been thinking a bit about, well, about my last year, actually, and realizing that one way or another, in quite a number of different areas of my life, I haven't known where I stand. In my relationship, in my new job, after seven years or so in the old one, in the face of old age and sickness in my family, and also in the consultative process, private preceptors, in many ways I haven't known where I stand. So when, well, yeah, at times I haven't known which way is up, even. And that's been quite difficult. I sort of straightforward confidence that I think I'd got used to being able to reach relatively easily, hasn't been so readily available for me. And instead I've felt a lot of confusion and fear and frustration and grief, and one of the things, it's not the whole of the story, but it is part of it. And I'm kind of saying this, because when Diane Andy said, "How about giving a talk on standing on emptiness?" It felt like it just hit the spot. Like, that's what this is asking me to do in many ways. Because it's been a time of the unfamiliar and challenge and unhappiness some of the time, but certainly the unfamiliar in lots of ways. So yeah, standing on emptiness I thought, "I better do it, I better just do it." So probably that's why I said yes so quickly. So unfortunately I didn't really clock that she was asking me to give a bit of an overview of view, meditation and action. Because as the weeks went by, I got more and more gripped, although that's the wrong word, by view, view. And that's really what I want to talk about. But I will talk a bit about the rest of it. And I'll refer you to this book, Reginald Ray's book. It's all about view, meditation and action. It's really great. It's got plenty of technical detail, and it's also really heartwarming in lots of it. So if you want to know more, look at that. It's called indestructible truth. That's really great. So I hadn't really come across view, meditation and action as such, before starting to prepare for this talk, so I'm no expert. But I do want to kind of look at it in a number of different ways, and hope that by doing that, you might find some different ways into it to guide yourself into it as a topic. And I'll be dropping in some pieces of what seemed to me to be pure view, really, or something that touches it, to try to give us a bit of an experience, not just of listening to my voice, but a bit of an experience of what it is I'm talking about. I can only share with you things that evoke that in me. So let's see how it goes. So view, meditation and action. And I want to start with Reginald Ray's opening paragraph, because that instantly shows us the ground that we're on. And he says, "Truth makes little sense, and has no real impact if it's merely a collection of abstract ideas." Truth that is living experience, on the other hand, is challenging, threatening, and transforming. The first kind of truth consists of information collected and added from a safe distance to our mental inventory. The second kind involves risking our familiar and coherent interpretation of the world. It is an act of surrender, of complete and embodied cognition, that is seeing, feeling, intuiting, and comprehending all at once. Living truth leads us ever more deeply into the unknown territory of what our life is. So living truth, what view shows us demands risk, surrender, being in the unknown. Without our familiar and coherent interpretations of the world, he asks us to stand on emptiness. As Robert Thurman puts it in his introduction to the Vermalikertina d'Essia, he talks about being able to bear not having bearings, having the coordinates of the familiar removed, and instead finding and developing the faculties you need to move into unknown territory. So in practice, what is the territory of our alliance? Well, according to Buddhism, it's Sanzara. Dilga Kincerimishi puts it like this. He says, "Sanzara is the condition of beings who, by acting under the influence of obscuring emotions, perpetuate their own suffering." He says, "You is about freshly clarifying our understanding of Sanzara and inspiring a deeply felt sadness towards it." That sort of heartfelt response, because we see the fact of existence as faults, and then we hit ourselves against them. So as he says, "First conceiving an eye, we cling to an ego. Then conceiving a mind, we cling to a material world. Like water in a water view, helplessly we circle. I bow down to the compassion that arises for all beings." So there's this sadness in response. And traditionally that leads to a strong motivation to free ourselves from the habitual patterns and the ignorance that perpetuates suffering. We all know this feeling. This get me out of here feeling, or that there must be more to life than this feeling, or even just grief, that feeling of the potency of sadness in response to how we are finding life. But of course by itself that's not enough. We need to know how to actually free ourselves from Sanzara, how to practice it on. So for today in Buddhism, view, meditation and action is the sort of ABC of practice. Unlike your ABC, you go over it again and again and again. So according to the Tibetan tradition, the teachings of the three yannas were all given by the Buddha during his lifetime on specific occasions and to particular audiences in line with his practice of skillful means. And each of the three vehicles has its own view, meditation and action, or view, practice and result. You sometimes come across it as, so you hear about the nine yannas and that's what that's talking about. The Reginald Ray lays it all out. I think he's got a very nice table if you like that sort of thing. So I'm not going to go into that really. But just very briefly, view is a conceptual understanding that gives orientation to the practice. Meditation outlines the concrete methodologies of transformation. So what you actually do, an action points to what is attained by faith through a practice. So how do we do this? How do we thoroughly experience samsara as it really is? How do we unconditionally accept the conditioned? Well, according to the Tibetan tradition, by learning to recognize it. That's what we have to do first. What is the practice of view? So as Durgle Kinci Rinpoche says, "It's absolutely necessary to establish the correct view." That is to acquire a complete certainty about the absolute truth. That the phenomenal world, though obviously appearing and functioning, is utterly devoid of any ultimate reality. This is the seed from which the perfect fruit of enlightenment will grow. And again he says, "What does this mean?" It means we've got to first of all establish proper understanding of the teachings about reality. And secondly, incorporate that view into our inner experience. Remember, original way, it's not just information added from a safe distance to a mental inventory. We've got to live it. It's an act of surrender, of complete and embodied cognition. So secondly, meditation. Again, Durgle Kinci Rinpoche says, "This means put the view into practice over and over again." Why? Why? Well, why should this work? What is meditation? Why is this appropriate for meditation? Well, Reginald Ray says, "Meditation is definitely not healthy for the ego." He says, "It's not possible to meditate unless you're more interested in finding out what is going on than in maintaining a particular idea for who you are." That's true. The first thing you begin to notice is that things are not as solid and substantial as they previously assumed. There are gaps in one's thoughts and feelings. Things appear somewhat random. One may see things about oneself not previously noticed, perhaps one's pretensions or unkindness. Meditation itself involves looking into one's own experience. If we honestly look at ourselves in the world, we see the ego is basically a bad idea with no future. And this kind of looking sounds its death now. A bad idea with no future. Well, meditation aims at an experience which is free from complexity, free from the complexity of the gains of ego. So then thirdly, action. Again, do go kensirumshi. Maintain your experience of the view at all times and in all circumstances. That's action. Well, fajradashini is going to talk about action tomorrow. I would say much about it now. But in the meantime, I thought I'd just tell you one of the things that yes, she told us to say about action. She says, "Action is the activity of the Dharma." What does this mean? Whatever happens, remain continuously and incontrovertibly with the experience. Using the experience for spiritual advancement. In truth, whether walking, moving, sleeping, eating or sitting, on all the paths of action, remain in contact with your practice. Never allow yourself to be separated from your practice. By such action, you are endowed with the very epitome movement of action. More from fajradashini. Tomorrow. So, do go kensirumshi says, "Through the constant combination of these three, meditation and action, the fruit of the practice of Dharma will fully ripen." And experientially he says, "Gentleness and self-discipline show understanding of the view. Freedom from obscuring emotions shows meditation. And these, rooted and effortlessly expressed show action." So, it's a path, a complete path. So, it's a path, a complete path. And it comes down towards through the impassioned, these impassioned to their invoices. That's how it sounds to me. Yes, you choke on Padmasambhava, melorepa, to name but three. And it's a teaching about love. And in that characteristically Tibetan way, it demands total commitment. Total mobilization of our energies. Terrific determination and watchfulness. A strength of receptivity and applied will. And this little phrase, this little verse from the Kadampa Masters, really said that to me, "I hold the spear of mindfulness at the gate of the mind, and when the emotions threaten, I too will threaten them. When they relax their grip, only then will I relax mine." So, that's one for the warrior queens of mindfulness. You've got to get our inspiration from somewhere, and our Lord of the Rings has finished. So, there's this constant combination of the three. But they also get talked of as a unification or becoming unified, a sort of meeting point of view, meditation and action, which Padmasambhava particularly talked about, showing the view and conduct as a unity. So, you get these phrases about descending with the view while ascending with the conduct. Or, in terms of a Tibetan proverb, as we mature, the sky comes closer to the air. And it's like a nice wee good note. So, I've been trying to think about, just, you know, and we have I relate to that, this descending with the view and ascending with the conduct. And I think the closest I've come to it as a sense of this is in two short dreams I had. Quite a few years ago, so I thought I'd just tell you then. So, in the first one, I was lying on the ground and staked at my feet. There's this sky blue cloth, there's me lying on the ground. Staked at my feet is this cloth which is soaring over me like that, very close. Flying over me, this sensual, pure, clean, rippling, silken cloth, moving, always in motion, deeply affecting and sort of kinesthetic without me ever actually touching it. It's so close, it's showing me something without me grasping at it or even wanting to touch it and the sense of all my inner senses, the vital of my life, the vital of my life. And then not long after that, I had another dream about a sky blue cloth. But this time, I had to wash it and I had to wash it, not in water, but in the air. I had to dig a hole with my hands in this red air, no water, I had to dig a hole with my hands and I had to rub the cloth in this air back and forth, back and forth. And as it got streaked with the ochre, my heart sort of expanded with joy and this sense that this was it coming clean, it was coming clean. As it got more and more streaked. So I wanted to mention these dreams because somehow they evoke in me something of a feeling for view, something about a sort of deeper alignment and also a unification somehow, kind of a unification whether it's sky and earth or sort of inner senses coming together and being experienced, something like that. But also to sort of say something about view being not just heady. It's not just about thinking somehow, although I reckon thinking gets a bad name actually. I'm not sure we do enough of it. According to Edward, the bone of thinking is exploring experience to a purpose. And if we don't do that, we're sunk. So let's not get too polarized with thinking somehow. But I want to explore a view under three headings. So study, faith in the sense of deep conviction and also a little bit about ritual and metaphor. So these themselves as practice would be view because they'd be trying to put the view into action to practice. They all give rise to awareness and to openness to a kind of vivid noticing and perceiving that can bring stability to our practice. But also a loosening of view and an experience of openness to the view because we encounter the unknown in each of them. So objectively, okay, view is doctrinal explanation. You know, the general way we ought to regard reality. But subjectively, in my own experience, it seems to me more like or as much like coming into contact with and refusing to yield up somehow, my own sense of what I truly deeply value in life. What it is any of us want to live out in our practice. What it is according to Chinese Buddhism that there is already an answer that's pushing to be lived. As Roka says, your innermost happening is worth all your love. You must somehow work on that. So view as an expression of reality is literally your innermost happening. At the level of your sales that your innermost happening, but your innermost experience of yourself. But as a touch dawn for the direction of your practice, view keeps you in touch with what, with the particular expressions of reality, that fascinate, that guide, that inspire, that keep you reflecting, that keep faith for you in what burns in you and what burns for you. So view is a tool for working out the secret of your blood. Because that leans on into the unknown territory of all my faith. So view as a word, just as a word itself. I thought it was interesting because it combines the present moment. View means seeing, observing, contemplating, watching, the present moment, but also with what we make of that moment. Because view also means opinion, thought, intention, expectation. So what you see and what you make of what you see combined make up your viewpoint. The mental attitude that determines your opinions, your judgments, your point of view. It seemed to me a place to start anyway might be what I see when I stand in a particular place. That's my view, especially in a habitual place, like the ego. But more specifically than view is the general way we should regard the existential truths about life, independent of our filters and our preferences. And this is not just how we should regard Buddhism's truth, but how we should regard Buddhism's way of describing what the unknown territory of our life is. So why do we suffer? Well traditionally because of the obscuring emotions, the glaciers and the upper glaciers. Our constructs for keeping the world in place, keeping it in line with our habitual interpretations. Particularly our notion of being, our notion of the ego. So for Asanga, Asanga says that for ordinary beings, this notion of being is the root of all disgusted thought and mental proliferation. This notion of being is what keeps us away from mindfulness. Being is determined, he says, to have essential nature solely by virtue of verbal designation, and is such as clung to by the world for a long time. So our world is, as it is, partly because we insist on saying in song. It's actually too simple that, doesn't it? I don't think it is. Partly it's how it is because we insist on saying it in a certain way. And then we believe ourselves. So this seems to me as the imaginal reality, the patikalpata of the yoga chalman. And it's also the complexity of the game. And compare that with the relentless simplicity and the paired down quality of this. Base your mind on the Dharma. Base your Dharma on a humble life. Base your humble life on the thought of death. Base your death on a lonely cave. Now in contrast, that's pretty tough. But I didn't want to ask us, how simple can you bear it? How simple can you bear life? I'm quite struck by this sort of surge in the order towards pure awareness. Actually, pure awareness and meditation practices. And I think that flex a desire for simplicity. A real desire to get below complexity. A recognition for a need for simplicity in our minds and in our lives. And I was remembering that when I learned to meditate, Millarepa and Padma Samba were the presiding deities of the Glasgow Centre. So Buddhism first came to me in eagle cries and mountain fastnesses and that kind of thing. So with this view of meditation and action coming more into our parlance, I'm quite excited to be getting a taste of that again. So the first way I wanted to talk about view is through studying. And again, according to our teacher, the way we take up view is to combine three things. The practice of the Brahmani horrors, careful study of the Dharma and direct experience. Sounds like a well balanced retreat program. And you might be concerned that this means head down, no nonsense, wall-to-wall Margemika when I say careful study. And I think we should be so lucky. And just because I'm standing here and you're all sitting there, I wanted to give you my favourite crazy example just to show how much fun you could be having. Just listen to this. Something else is something else based on something else. Something else is not something else without it's something else. Something is not different from that something on which it depends. Something else as such is not found in something else, nor is it found in something that is not something else. And the editor, hopefully, has here in itself. Since something else in itself is not to be found, something else and that something in relation to which it is something else certainly do not exist. But the aim is not just wackiness, although it is that well, but it's meant to stretch our minds further than they can go. Because if you can make concepts cancel each other out and hold your mind there, then according to Jung, you find out what supports you when you can no longer support yourself. And that's what the perfection of wisdom texts are after. And I had a little experience a bit like this that thing of getting things to cancel out and holding your mind there on a tiny scale, very recently. And I wanted to thank her for this publicly, but Anne-Rigita and I were involved in a chapter day on a particular discussion recently, and she did help me get a taste of this because she was willing to be a sort of brick wall of reality in relation to what I was saying. I just kept confounding it. I thought what I was saying was so reasonable. So reasonable. But she just kept confounding my view. She just kept saying, "It's not like that. It's not like that." "Yeah, yeah, it's not like that." And I went through this whole kind of series of mild irritation, frustration, disbelief. Come on, you must be kidding me, agree with me, agree with me, whatever it was. She just kept saying, "It's not like that. It's not like that." And just being a complete brick wall appropriately, I must say. We just ended up laughing. But also, I did have this sense of kind of softening around it. It was a bit like, "I just hit my head off it. I could see for myself." I began to see for myself the limitations of what I was saying, but that I was instilling on in spite of myself. And it just kind of broke. And gave way to a kind of softness, a kind of sympathy, a kind of openness. So thank you, and my good time. So careful study and this coming up against the limits of what we think. But as Lama Givinda says, "We must first have reached the limits of our thinking before we are qualified to transcend them." So if thinking is exploring experience to a purpose, do we do it enough? Do we think? What does that mean to us? Thinking. I suppose by that I really mean, "Well, how seriously?" You see how much fun you can have, but how seriously do we take study? How seriously do we really take finding out what Dharma says? Okay, the voice of the perfection of wisdom is the product not only of correct understanding, but of profound reflection and practice. And we can't leap to that point. But I find it interesting how much we can resonate with it if we try. And at least at the level of being clear about the content. We can understand, I think, a lot more than we think we can. And if these texts contain truths about life, as they claim to, that we need to know, then truly it's worth making the effort. But view, view. So in Buddhism, knowing what our teacher has taught or what the texts actually say is necessary. But why? Well, partly because Buddhist teachings have emerged out of countless generations of meditators and point us to our innermost, most subtle, most personal experience. Your innermost happening, that's worth all your love. And secondly, because the first Pranya listening, I suppose part of what study is, provides us with something reliable to reflect on in the second Pranya reflection. Because if we don't know what the teachings say, we'll just fall back on our preconceptions, on the very preconceptions that gets into messes in the first place. So it's important that we really know what the teachings say. But also so that we can fall back on them later. What we learn, what we put in, we can come back to much later. So that when we encounter things that we list see in our experience, we're more likely to recognize them. So the whole path is this kind of moving backwards and forwards from words to experience and back again. Back and forth, back and forth. So another one for the warrior, Queen, is Yeshe Chogil again. And it seems to me to apply well to study. She says, spread the world of illusion before you and pierce it to the man. Search every part of it, drive into it with your mind. Let vitality itself pervade your mind. If you let the signs of vitality lessen, it is like killing a Buddha. Presumably because you're killing your own potential. But she also says, carefully guard the naturalness of experience. Protect your commitment as if it were your life and body. If you let it go, there is no explanation. Take all this to heart. This is the teaching. And I find it important to remember that because I think it was on the occasion of falling down the peepbok. I remember my trays saying to me that I needed to have not just a pure gung ho, but applied gung ho. So carefully guard the naturalness of your experience. So according to Asanga, it is vitally important that the practitioner is well-granded in firm conviction in supreme voidness. Which might kind of sound like the same as study. It might even sound like dogmatism, or like something you insist upon, or something you think out. But in fact, firm conviction, deep conviction, is the same as faith. It's an aspect of faith. And that's the next thing I want to talk about. As dogmatism says, expecting to attain realization without having faith would be like sitting in a cave facing north, waiting for the sunshine to pour in. It will never happen. And as Banti says, faith, confidence, trust, has to come first. It's the indispensable, emotional, or volitional element of any experience of insight into the nature of gravity. For so on, faith is deep conviction about what is real, lucidity as to what has value, and longing for what is possible. These are listed in the Pali canon, and you encounter them again and again and again. So as we know, Buddhism is full of lists. But life is rarely so obviously structured. Even so, having the view would mean taking our stand on a sustained interest in these descriptions being true, and testing them out by looking for them in our own experience, and recognizing them, acknowledging them in our own experience if we find them there. So they're not imperatives or instructions, but ways of recognizing what life is actually saying to us through our experiences. So deep conviction about what is real is an aspect of the youth, and it's also an aspect of faith. So what do we deeply know? What do we believe? What do we orient by? We're all oriented by something. Again, Padma Samba says, "Faith arises when reading the sacred teachings of your inclination, as well as amongst others." It's my advice to never be parted from the causes for faith to arise. It prevents the unfree states and earns the freedoms and riches. It makes you transcend objects of attachment and gain trust in total surrender. He says, "Faith arises when causes and conditions coincide, and you take impermanence to heart. Faith arises when remembering cause and effect." So according to Yesha Geltz, and the object of this deep conviction is the law of karma. It is Pratitya Samapada. That's what we must totally surrender to, what we unconditionally, what we must unconditionally accept. So fundamentally, the view is faith in conditionality, in what Joanna Macy calls the spaciousness and workability of Pratitya Samapada. So we're realizing the openness and the consistency in life, and that it's pregnant with karma. So I've been exploring conditionality with the help of my next major recommendation, this book. Mutual causality and general systems theory sounds great, huh? It's really, really fantastic. If you haven't already encountered it, Dr. Darshan has been looking at it too. I'm sure you hear more from her, so buy this book. And more than that, read it and study it. It's fascinating. Mutual causality in Buddhism and general systems theory. Don't be put off, it's really exciting. So conditioned co-production is a deep analysis of reality. It leads us deep into the unknown territory of what our life is. So what does it say? I mean, it's so familiar in one sense, isn't it? How we hear about it, if you haven't talked about it. But do we recognize it as our innermost happening? That's the point, really. That everything is radically impairment, that everything is mutually conditioned, subsystem in relationship and having no independent self-existence. Well, this reminded me of John Dunn. No man is an island, entire to itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the name. If a clot be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory wear. As well as if a man, or friends of thine own wear. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never sent to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. And more pugnaciously. But with just as much aspiration and recognition, he's George Bernard Shaw. This is the true joy in life. The being used for a pug that's recognized by yourself as a mighty one. The being thoroughly worn out before you've thrown on the scrap heap. The being a force of nature, instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. Ouch. So unless we want to carry on being like that, or unless we want to be like that, it's essential that we immerse ourselves in trying to understand what this emptiness is we stand on. But with the help of John and AC, I realize that it's exciting to read scientists talking about the world. Throws new and invigorating life for me on conditionality. I'm also familiar in many ways. So the self in process, they talk about, okay, it's like a stream. We're used to that. A stream of being, a stream of consciousness, flowing, not able to be isolated or fixed. But the self in process is also like a fire, in constant interaction with its environment, consuming and constituted by its impressions, fueled by sights, sounds, touches, tastes, smells, mental agents, and driven by the ones that they awaken. That's just the same as the Buddha in the fire family. So co-igniting with what it perceives and on which it acts, the self cannot be considered apart from the environment. I just think that's such a fresh way of thinking of it, co-igniting. That's what our consciousness is doing constantly. I sometimes think of it as being like spark plugs. You know how spark plugs work in a car, like that. But also, these scientists still listen to them talk. It's the pattern maintained by our transactions with the surrounding world, which is the touchstone of our personal identity. We are about whirlpools in a river of ever-flowing water. We are not stuff that abimes, but patterns that perpetuate themselves. We'll put more simply, "I seem to be a thereb." And as Reginald Ray keeps on saying, "Remember, the deeper truth is relational. The deeper truth is relational." So listening to scientists talk about the world is often beautiful. The individuality of the body is that of a flame rather than that of a stone, of a form rather than of a bit of substance. Structure is a result of function, and the organism resembles a flame rather than crystal. A living cell can be compared to a flame. Here is matter going in and out and being burned. It cannot be defined because it's not a system at rest. It's not a system at rest. It's a flow. It's a mystery. It's alternation. Alteration. It's exchange. Remember, Pat and Sandava, faith helps you gain trust in total surrender, and it's surrendering to this as a primary fact. Alteration. Exchange. And it's vital to realize it because the conventional notion itself has narrowed the horizons both of our cognition and our compassion. So liberation, according to the Buddhist's, is liberation of mind, for it is mind that is enslaved. It's liberated not through setting itself apart from Sonoma-nality, but increasing its awareness of it. So it all comes back to mindfulness and matter in many ways. So in practice, having faith, having faith that your efforts will be a fruit, that it's worth making efforts, even when you can't see their results. So, as I remember saying in the top last year, having faith that force will find shape, but no shape can hold. Today's solutions, how often are they tomorrow's problems? I was thinking of the interest system. I thought that. I'm just thinking of how it calls for patience, for a perspective. Having faith in the forces we cannot see in our yiddance, but also in intangibles in many ways, intangibles in communication. The thing that came to my mind was being able to give the benefit of the doubt. So the deeper truth is relational. And that brings me on to the last thing I wanted to talk about, the last way I wanted to approach for you, and that's ritual and metaphor. And I realise that I follow you by pursuing my sense of fascination about what is real, that essential emotional quality that makes you want to pursue something. As we've been saying, that's the same as faith. What fascinates me is what keeps me on the path, what gives direction and momentum to my practice. Shores the truth that stands for. And it's essential this fascination, this quality of fascination, because as Banti says, nothing that is thoroughly amenable to rational analysis will satisfy us for long. That's why wisdom is not just analytical awareness, but appreciative, aesthetic and understanding. So I find myself, unlike the ES's, I find myself fascinated by poetry, metaphor, ritual. Standing on emptiness is itself amenable. So standing in the view, we see that there's a poem at the heart of the world. According to the view, reality has a nature, and we can perceive it. And it's the same reality for the mind and the heart. Faith and conditionality is deep conviction in the view. The heart's release is a total release, a release into totality, pointing to the boundlessness and unbroken upness of reality, like space it is, without a break or crack. But it's also an unknowable totality, it's a mystery. It can't be approached very closely, other than through poetry. Yet we can be happy in it. I was thinking with Mallarepa, happy is the mind, powerful and confident, steeped in the realm of totality. View means anything to me, it means that. That's how I'm going to be. Happy is the mind, powerful and confident, steeped in the realm of totality. And also with a healthy body, I glorify the mandala of the whole. So, Reginald read tells us that the deep rituals is relational. And this is also the basis of ritual, because the essence of ritual is communication. Why do we need to communicate with other beings? Because communication is the exchange of energy and experience. And we need to continuously to be in a process of exchange with others. Other beings have things to give to us, and we have things to give to them. The only way that this occurs is through the give and take of communication. The pathways of this exchange are interconnectedness with other beings. And ritual opens these pathways and allows exchange and communication to occur. So, like ritual, metaphor makes connections which enrich. Suggests an openness of perception, a shift of perspective, at best a generous rejoicing quality. I think metaphor is important for view, because if you is seeing the relation of things, an imagination stepping beyond a particular view, is our means of perceiving it. View is seeing consequences and seeing relations, not just with the corporeal eye, as Blake calls it, but with an eye for a connection to something deeper. So, we must use our imagination. It requires the vivid immediacy of samata and the presence, the felt connection of the tasana. So, in the recognition of a connection, you give value and loving attention to something. You transfer qualities, you link, you connect, you see things in relation, and with openness. The example that came to my mind was from calendar girls. Do you remember that bit where they talk about the women of Yorkshire are like flowers? Well, the women of Yorkshire are flowers. So, that's the example that came to my mind. That's a metaphor. The women of Yorkshire are flowers. And as you watch that movie, and you listen to that poem, you know what they're all about. So, it's valuable, because it resists the easy option of habitual responses and interpretations. In one sense, it's a form of projection, metaphor and poetry. Literally, a thing made, a making up, a making of connections. But in another sense, as Subhitti once said to me, you don't make connections, you recognize them. And if, as in the Dalmatata, as in the Yogacana, we constantly create a world, then why not create a positive one? So, thinking metaphorically, we begin to build a ritual into the world. We begin to reveal the ritual in the world. Through ritual, one's led to take a larger view of one's life and one's world. So, metaphor, looking again, looking for connections, is the readmission of the familiar in a new way. Without dwelling in the safety of our habitual interpretations, but dwelling in the gap between simple sense consciousness, and the judgments we saw quickly make about things based on pre-existing labels, put in another way, if metaphor we can re-enchant the world. So, to conclude, if view is the general way we should regard reality, that way is to recognize the three lecturers and work towards unconditional acceptance of them in our everyday audience. This would mean standing on emptiness, acknowledging that we too are subject to the laws of conditionality, impermanent and insubstantial, and our evil-bound responses to those facts lead to self-generative suffering. But view is also being open to what an open mind notices. It gives a looser way of seeing one more appropriate to a world of patterns, not substances. This phrase just kept coming back to me. There is a poem at the heart of the world. There's a poem at the heart of the world. So, I thought I'd finish with a poem. It's a poem about view, actually, because of countryside, and it's called the High Blue Day on Scalpey, if I've remembered all the lines. This is the summit of contemplation, but no art can touch it. Blue, so blue, the far-out archipelago and the zoom, shimmering, shimmering, no art can touch it. The mind can only try to become attuned to it, to become quiet and still, and space itself out, knowing itself in the diamond country, in the ultimate, unmet art light. [applause]
