Iain McGilchrist Seminar | Oceania | Lokeshvara and Vajrajyoti

great yes lovely to be here um i'll just before i talk about the context um just the form format this morning will be um two short clips from the interview i think it's just the interview with nyan of archer so and uh vajraji and i will have a little bit of short conversation about each clip and then a couple of questions for your breakout rooms that are actually connected to the clip so um if you've seen the long form interview fantastic but if you haven't actually what we'll be talking about and what we'll be asking you is actually contained in these quite short clips they're just um a couple of them two or three minutes each um yes so just a little bit of of context if you don't already know i mean there is quite a lot of really useful information on the on the web pages but the um the interviews were about um the master and his misery which was um the book that ian mcgill chris published in 2009 and it's interesting that although it's um uh it it had popularity almost from the day it was published something has been gathering over the last 10 12 years and there's been some increasing interest and he has in the last say four years in particular he's done quite a lot of interviews videos um um conversations and so on so he's been doing those while he's been researching and writing his new book which has just come out which i already thought was quite amazing to be talking about a piece of work that he had been researching and writing 20 years ago published 12 years ago 13 years ago now and and he's that so he's kind of moving on but he's been very willing and open to have conversations about the book that has been published um i came across it uh partly because in our order we actually have someone who is a close friend of his who lives on the isle of skye or has a house on the isle of skye in north west scotland so i i came i came across the work via that route and um i i've never read the whole book i've read the first and last chapter so far i'm waiting for my early retirement to complete it but i immediately felt it was a work of great importance almost as important as any buddhist texts that i'd read and i think even the very short clips that we're showing today um at least speaks to me the reasons why i felt it to be so important i think one of the reasons is that um if you know anything about his background it's quite interesting in that he is multi-disciplinary that he had studied off by i think he was going to study theology and philosophy although he ended up reading english at university then switched to medicine in other words he manages to ground himself in the poetic and literary traditions and then study science and medicine and i think that has influenced his his medical journey and is why he's been able to synthesize some um perspectives which very few people have managed to do i think in my opinion so i think any attention given to him is fascinating and i think there's very strong congruences between his work and and buddhism in fact probably any spiritual direction as he himself says so just that's a little bit of context um well what i think what we're going to do is just play the the first clip and and then fragile jyoti and i will just talk about it for a few minutes then we'll play the second clip talk about it for a few minutes then you'll go into breakout rooms and and we'll walk for about half an hour and then we're going to come back at the end for a sort of a quick tie up at the end yeah so i think with no further ado shall we just get on and play the first clip benefit of um those who are listening who may not have read my book the idea that's encapsulated in the title is that of a wise spiritual master who looks after a community that flourishes and grows and he realizes that in time he can't look after everything but he has an even more important insight which is that he mustn't get involved with certain things if he's to maintain his all-important oversight so he employ appoints his um sort of brightest and best helper to go about on his behalf and act as a functionary but the functionary being bright but not bright enough believes he knows any everything which is always a sign of a fool and he thinks what does the master know i know it all and he adopts the cloak of the master but not knowing what it is he doesn't know he and the master and the community fall to ruin now uh that when i read that and i can't remember exactly where i found it i say i found it in nature but when i look back it's not really that that i found in nature it's perhaps rather like the story of the sort of apprentice in gerta's poem but it in the secret of the golden flower uh there there are texts that save exactly this that the what they call the what i would call the left hemisphere the analytic mind is like a violent general who commands a fierce army from a distance but the sword must be turned around and what they mean by the sword must be turned around is that the intellect must understand the limits to the intellect which it only rarely ever does but when it does it can then restore the master and it actually uses the term the master and and the the servant that the left hemisphere equivalent the kind of noisy analytic intellect is a very good servant but a very poor master and i've also found it in rumi i found it in indian texts you know it's it's everywhere that you look in spiritual literature there we are well i think what you're arguing is a wisdom perspective and uh you you beautifully lay that out in both scientific terms and philosophical terms uh uh but but you know that there there is it's an old wisdom isn't it that the the intellect alone will not teach us about the most important things about being human and yet we need it it's it's so intrinsic to our success as human beings and survival as human beings and yet it's it's it has a place yeah so that's the first clip um i think i think the first thing i'll i'll just ask reggie jody a question because um you had actually read this book several years before i had and maybe maybe not that long after it was published and i wonder whether that title or even the story that the title refers to whether that in itself had some um effect or impact on you yeah thanks lakisha um what yeah i read it i don't know how long ago ages and i think i read it twice although i must admit i just found a bookmark in it kind of a quarter of the way in so maybe i read it one and a quarter times it's quite a big book quite fine print um i find the power the parable and the title alone very useful like parables are they they remain embedded in one's mind um and then thinking about that you know the parable really is about this the the brain being in two hearts um and the left brain being this uh kind of analytic um intellect and the right brain being more holistic more um poetic perhaps and i remember back to my very first retreat which is a long time ago my very first it was a retreat near wellington um perhaps just a weekend and i came back from that retreat and found myself listening to classical music which i wasn't really into and browsing the bookshops for poetry books which you know i did have some poetry books but i never really connected with poetry and um it was like a whole other world open to me and that classical music moved me some poetry moved me in a way i never had before and this particular parable and the title of the book kind of um explains that this sounds a bit simplistic in a way but you know my work my everyday life was very kind of intellectual and analytic and being on retreat enabled the more holistic project part of my brain to switch into action turn on more brightly and engage with the world quite differently and and that's yeah i keep noticing that in my life i guess um meditation and meditation in particular but also being in nature for me enables the the right side of my brain to to come alive more fully and it's so such a relief when it and it does and i was thinking oh actually when we've been talking like israel often when you talk you talk about myths the importance of myth um so i wonder how this parable relates to your kind of um emphasis on on myth as having value in itself yeah yeah thank you yeah it's interesting because my probably my journey is a little bit different for you because my my foundation is a bit of a um i tend towards the end the chaos end of the spectrum rather than the analytic end of the spectrum but um what was interesting to me even in that clip was ian mcgill chris almost excitement of finding these stories from other traditions that can that are about his title so he he picked it up from one tradition but then he found that there were parallel stories from other traditions in other words it suggests that the truth that the parable refers to that he embedded in the title of his book is an archetypal story or even a universal story and and i could you can see that he gets quite energized by that idea because he is trying to point out to us a universal truth and um i didn't know when i became a buddhist and started practicing with our community i didn't know maybe you you get a sense of it i didn't know that there was this permission to use story and myth as as as being a buddhist and i love that and i've had some very good training from particularly a very good artist friend of mine uh arloka and who always talks you know about myth and story and and even folk stories and and fairy stories in fact he always mentioned a book to me by bruno bettelheim called the uses of enchantment that was published in the 1970s and uh i've just found a hardback copy of it um two weeks ago so that's going to be my uh reading over the next couple of months and i think that stories i think it's a question for me that goes something like oh okay so there is a lot in buddhism about um uh trying to um [Music] trying to get underneath experience trying to get underneath it and and you know can't get underneath concepts and ideas but i'm i i think well there's definitely got to be a place for stories and myths and parables in buddhism because they are actually what motivate us that's what motivates me anyway that's that's really what how that's what makes me want to go beyond myself and even cooperate with with other people so you know in a way i think that's this evocation of the artistic mind if you like and being able to practice that as a buddhist has been very important and i don't i mean i wonder just you coming from that analytic background and and saying how you started to listen to music and i wonder how that has played out and especially can i bring in an idea of the creative mind which is even the idea of doing nothing or even allowing yourself to be bored and has that have you actually tried practicing that yeah that's that's a big um i think that's such a big and such an important topic um mcgill chris makes the point that the the left brain likes to be busy it likes novelty it's always seeking new new experience it's the left brain that gets gets you reaching towards your phone or your computer screen or you know um and and the right brain doesn't do that kind of stuff it um it's not interested in the the latest you know just email message or whatever it kind of i think it kind of switches off or gets at least gets overwhelmed by this analytic left brain uh and i think well you know cebuty and our tradition and shiratana and probably many people but he's been really um really emphasized that we need to sit until we're bored and then we need to just keep on sitting and he doesn't mean sitting in meditation he just means sitting doing nothing um but even like for me even sitting doing nothing on my deck for quite a while which i do a lot of there's still a lot to um for the left brain to get busy on like oh that needs to be pruned all those chocks need to be fed or you know there's times there's tons of left brain activity going on but what so what i find i need to do is get away from home go and sit it's a national location normally like in the bush there's no jobs for me there because i've never been on the kind of team on the ground there um and just really let my let myself get bored i think i think this culture um encourages a very low tolerance of boredom there's so many ways of not being bored but it's only kind of through if when we sit through boredom often that some some other experience can open up something much richer deeper you know and and so much more pleasurable and beautiful you know um i mean this is a bit simplistic talking about left and right brain so apologies in a way but the left brain yeah it just wants to kind of get on with superficial stuff you know uh in his terms you know order the armies what to do you know organize the world administrate the world be a bureaucrat all this kind of stuff and what the the master realized drawing on the title was that if you're doing that kind of thing you can't do the more important stuff but for us in the world it's we you know as spiritual people and everyone is a spiritual person actually we need to um develop the capacity to you know run our lives live reasonably functional lives and deepen into something much more mysterious and beautiful so and that's a challenge you know that is certainly a challenge people need to attend to emails i'm sure uh you know have diaries have schedules so yeah it's it's such a loss that we can't find ways of accessing the depths and the beauty [Music] yeah and i wonder you know yeah i i think you've got some thoughts around this left brain world to use those terms would you mind talking about them like israel yeah maybe just before we go on to the second clip i mean i was really struck by ian mcgill chris um hypothesizing um what he thought a left a left hemispheric or that kind of mode uh world would look like and then looking at the actual world and going hmm it looks rather like as though it's you know it's a left hemispheric functioning world or something so i must admit when i started to read him it was based on i was already a bit concerned over several friends and family like my stepmom for example was working in the nhs in england which is the national health service and several good friends of mines were teachers and over about um 10 years all of these ways of measuring their performance were coming in um some of that look you know on the face of it you thought it's probably quite helpful annual reviews and so on but but if people were being they were there were quantitative measures that people were being their performance was being measured on something just didn't sit right in me i it felt like a world where we stopped trusting each other and and i'll actually read a little bit of what um ian mcgill chris said you might expect to see if it was a world dominated by this um analytic mode of the left hemisphere he says and then i'll just re this is a direct quote an increasingly mechanistic fragmented decontextualized world marked by unwarranted optimism mixed with paranoia which in itself just that line is quite incredible and a feeling of emptiness has come about reflecting i believe the unopposed action of a dysfunctional left hemisphere so you know it's a bit sobering reading that and it's not the entire story by any means and it's a bit like he is not never down on the left hemisphere he says it performs vital vital functions for us to be able to exist and get through our day but i wonder whether we might be moving into territory of the second clip which is on the matter and consciousness so i wonder is there anything else you want to say pedro doty or should we move on to that second clip well just to say i i really like that line about paranoid optimistic but paranoid unwarranted optimism mixed with paranoia yeah i mean whether it's global warming or the pandemic or practically anything else we can we can feel that and i can feel that on myself and i can see that around me yeah yeah yeah so maybe that maybe this might segue into the second clip i think varade if you could play that i wonder if you could say more about consciousness and i know that uh in the book you you you you say that well we don't know whether consciousness is an emerging phenomenon of the brain or whether the brain is is mediating consciousness and um and of course how can one be sure uh but i wondered whether you you as as you know uh as it were off the record have an opinion do you you know do you have a personal view as to which is more likely i certainly do it is pretty much incoherent to imagine that consciousness somehow emanates out of matter uh in fact i adopt the view that matter is a phenomenon in consciousness that the cosmos is conscious and that matter is a if you like a phase of consciousness i'm using the term in the scientific sense that you know water has phases in one it's hard and solid and immobile and can break your head uh in another it's flowing and transparent in another it is invisible so uh in in this sense i think that matter is a an element of resistance in consciousness and that takes me to another point that one of the themes of the book is that resistance is very important for the coming about of anything at all that it is in itself creative that that in a way creation needs an element of resistance and matter is a way of solidifying and slowing down the movement of spirit and energy and giving it form for a while so i see it as i mean after all in a very literal way um i i know that i i only know matter because of my consciousness there's no question about that but we don't know that i only know consciousness because of matter i mean that that is that may be the case or it may not we we don't know but i have a very strong hunch that it can't possibly just be emanating by the way um people like to talk about interconnections as being the point that somehow when you reach a certain number of interconnections uh billions of these then you start to get consciousness and it may interest listeners to know that the cerebellum which is the ancient part of the brain at the base of the brain and posterior in the skull has four times as many neurons as the cerebrum on which consciousness depends and it has an exponentially larger number of connections but it cannot support consciousness and it's also become obvious that creatures that don't have neurons have awareness plants for example yeah so that's kind of mind-blowing isn't it what he's saying um by the way if you want to watch that again because it's certainly worth watching a few times i have it's is available i'm not exactly aware but i'm sure bharati will tell you later yeah um it's kind of mind-blowing and it's so in accord with the dharma um the dharma at all levels i guess from early dark early the early buddhist teachings to later buddhist teachings it's very in the chord with some of them and we might come to that a bit later i like i wonder what you make of this like what it means to you what is it how do you make use of that kind of teaching i mean the thing is i can't no um you know i have no idea i don't actually know what consciousness is i i have no idea whether it precedes matter you know that there is a obviously the buddha taught had a very very similar teaching and one of the one of the the teachings that i i try and reflect on is that that the nadhanas that the chain of causation and in that teaching consciousness precedes form so it does seem to say what amy gilchrist is saying from his scientific study or whatever or his philosophical reflections i think i feel quite happy to take it on trust i mean that's all i can say and actually live as if that is the case and i think that there's a number of implications from that if i do that i've been using a text a tibetan text recently which it's based on the idea of shunyata which although it's translated as emptiness actually means that nothing is fixed and that that text invites me to perceive the world um as if it's a dream as if it's ephemeral as if it's like a rainbow um and and so i i like i just try and do that i mean i just try and do that and um i think that helps just going back to the previous bit of conversation like just to see the like even just being in in a natural environment you don't actually have to be somewhere incredibly wild and remote just to see the wonder of it all you just need a tree basically in front of you or or you need a long view to a hill or something so i do try and um practice like that um one of my favorite poems from from our teacher sanger extra is called um animist and and he i mean it's basically saying something very similar which is uh um he fears that we are up over operating on this left hemispheric function that um uh we've made the world look mean and small and lost the wonder of it all and so i do try and like not do that and do try and see the wonder in it all and try and see things as alive and i think that this has implications then for how we behave and um ethics and um well that's maybe that's a question for you vader jody um i i wonder whether by thinking of consciousness preceding matter that actually has ethical implications i mean yes um yes and there's so many ways of thinking about those ethical implications so yeah to go back to early early buddhism the early earliest teachings of the buddha uh so this is one way into your your question i guess if if we go to the the dharmapada which i have here sangra um i mean this will be familiar to many of you you probably know what i'm going to read but it's the first first verses of the dharmapada um i'll read it hopefully you'll get why uh experiences are preceded by mind led by mind and produced by mind one speaks or acts with an impure mind suffering follows even as the cartwheel follows the hoof of the ox drawing the card experiences are preceded by mind lead by mind and produced by mind if one speaks or acts with a purer mind happiness follows like a shadow that never departs so i mean that's so clear isn't it um it is in a way saying well personally we we create our worlds how we what we do with our minds um whether it's even uh you know a bit of a paradox that that sentence what we do with our minds determines what what our worlds are like um and if one is if we act skillfully as as we say um then we will experience a more beautiful satisfying contented life and so will the people around us if we get done skillfully the converse will happen to us and the and the world around us so and you know in a way that those verses from the dharma part are other foundations of our of our ethical practice it's how we create our our world and to go back to my retreat experiences and i'm sure this rings about with many of you often when i'm on retreat you know the world comes alive especially the natural world it's like everything looks and sounds different or just a little bit different not just a little bit more beautiful but as if well i don't know it's it can't be put into words in a way because you know the right brain isn't so great with words one because you know that simplistically it's not so great with words but it's like the energy around me is apparent in everything i see in here rather than than the matter involved in everything i see in here so and and being on retreat i think we do we do transform our minds and and therefore the world around us is also is also transformed and reflected back to us and then that becomes a virtual circle it continues whereas one point um mcgill chris makes his left brain or lift consciousness ways of thinking and seeing and acting uh also feed on each other and that is why it's so dangerous for for us and our alcohol cultures and yeah what what have you experienced that on retreat or do you have a do you have a different way of talking about it or expressing it um well one thing i really like from that clip was when he used the idea of resistance um and as a positive force in other words anything useful comes out of trying to meet resistance um in the in the long form interview he unpacks that a little bit talking about things that apparently are opposite and and how uh i mean that's that's a definitely a theme in my life is is recognizing and some of you who know me know i talk about this a lot recognizing the contradictions inherent in myself and in the world around me and and so when you know when you meet something which seems to oppose uh what you want to do or where you want to go you meet that resistance and you try and then find a higher synthesis and and you do need both i think you do need both faculties as it were you actually do need some analytical component to understand something but you also need that pattern in mind to actually see see the wonder and see the beauty so i i do um there is a forensic clarity that comes from analysis so i do try and do that on retreat or in life in meditation but i always try and have a as much as i can a kind of overarching positive vision of life in which i can do that forensic analysis as much as i can do it so i do try and have a you know like as you you talk about retreats you know i do try and do a cloud watching practice i i try and do it outside of retreat as well and it's a good test of my consciousness have i am i able just to sit and watch clouds actually moving in the sky like because sometimes i try and i literally it's too painful for doing it for more than 10 seconds and it means that i'm in this kind of you know utilitarian administrative type mode or something and it's very difficult to get out of but it's worth making the effort and i think we relate to people better when we just make a little bit of effort to almost like just to widen the perspective um yeah i mean maybe maybe that's all i yeah i mean there's lots more that we could say but i wonder whether um i'm doing for time is it um time i would just yeah i think one yeah you keep on uh emphasizing lucas for that actually we're not saying the left brain is bad that we yes that we need to eliminate it somehow that but it's more that they need to be in more balance and and what and one of them in the christ's examples of that this is just very simple is if you if you watch a you know a garden bird in the garden it's both like pecking at the ground very focused because it needs to be very focused with its beak and its ears yeah hear the worms and it also has a a broad awareness and you can see both these things happening if you watch a bird looking out from danger or predators so the broad awareness and the terms we're speaking of is the the right brain i guess that broad awareness that can you know sky gaze um and the the feeding brain the listening for the worms side is the the left analytical more more focused brain and a bird needs both you know clearly using that example but we also we all need both but they need to be putting together and actually the point in the girl chris make is the left brain it needs to be reminded that it's the the servant that's his language of the right brain um yes it's so prone to thinking it knows everything yes and he really emphasizes that not knowing is uh much more valuable and important than certainty yeah um if we think we know it's not just you know deluded it's dangerous for us for us and the people around us yes at least at least the only thing i'd like to add to that would be i think he's quite clear that that there is a direction of travel because he says at one point the the danger of saying that certainty is is uh dangerous which he does believe in and is true um can lead you to the most um the post-modern position that there's no truth to be found anywhere and he says no but i think you can set a direction of travel um so even though um you don't you know there isn't a kind of certainty that you arrive at this place of perfection you kind of know which way to orientate yourself and actually that that's an ethical path and it's also a path of beauty and i think that's important yes yeah that's right that is so helpful isn't it um to encourage us to stay clear on our our values really our effects about who we want to become um and see our course in that direction listen shall we shall we just set up some breakout room so that you you you guys can talk about this as well we just wanted to you know give a little bit of conversation from our um perspective of that from those clips and just maybe give you a couple of questions quite simple questions just to start a conversation in breakout rooms so shall i just i think faraday's going to put them in the chat but i'll just read them out if you like is that helpful to read the mail yeah yeah um the first one is well how do you understand or or do you recognize even those two modes from the first clip because that is this central thesis isn't it the left hemispheric functioning the analytic mind and the right hemispheric mind of intuition and imagination so and what does that mean for you quite simple really what does that mean for you did you recognize it in your experience and what does it mean for you and then and then the second question um we can't really know if consciousness precedes um the so-called material world i mean mcgill chris says he pretty sure it does but um how would it be to live as if we were in a co-created relationship with everything outside of us and with everything that's outside of us so i think that's probably a nice way of putting this you know this relationship between uh consciousness and matter and especially with other people as well um thinking that we actually co-create everything that we are and everything that is in front of us so anyway there are two suggested questions just to just to give a little bit of form if you like a a little bit of structure to a conversation and i think you're in breakout rooms

Channel: Adhisthana Triratna

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Id: YzaNoOzdMs8

Length: 36min 52sec (2212 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 15 2022