We welcome you to our daylong on the fundamentals of energetics at the Washington Buddhist Vihara. If your only awareness of Buddhism is filtered through English language and North American practice centers, you might be surprised by this choice of a topic for a daylong. To open up our understanding, I would point to our Western selection of Buddhist teachings that emphasize a scientific methodology inherent in the path practice of the ancient pali teachings. This is not an incorrect selection. It is, however, incomplete and for those who take things too narrowly or literally can stall one's practice without the juicy bits that come when this scientific, modernist view is allowed to soften and open up to other ways.
At its core, the teachings that I'm trying to expand upon revolve around the Pali word rupa meaning form or image. The Buddha defines rupa as a fundamental building blocks of reality that feed and cling together other realities. With such a definition, we see the Buddha pivots from his contemporaries' views of rupa as form or image. So our translation is not quite good enough, is it? When pressed by a student, the Buddha defined rupa as the four elements of earth, water, fire and air. The takeaway here is that this should not be dismissed as a primitive form of physics that is attempting to define the world in terms of four categories. Rather, it's an underlying experience of reality as a refined field or web of interwoven sensitivities that, although ever present in our awareness, is obscured by our everyday consciousness.
Indeed, you can do a mind experiment the next time someone asks your name. Before you say, I'm so and so, what is felt inside you before you speak that gives you such certainty that that name touches something “inside” you? It might be whatever breath you take before you speak that slides, moves, vibrates inside somewhere as a “here, i am." We brush over this layer of inner, felt sensitivity all day long. Yet, the glue that keeps us saying I'm so and so is inseparable from it. When prolonged and balanced through a meditation practice, these elements are felt as a pleasurable ground of our common everyday human experience. In a good life's practice, we cultivate long hours and years of letting this layer of human experience express itself fully and notice many gifts arise from this fertile ground for the flowering of our awakening.
In developing a practice around energetics, we notice many powerful effects. First off, it quiets conceptual proliferation and thinking. Next, it can dissolve at their origination various hindrances. Intense desires, anger, restlessness, etc. become and dissolve at their originating points as vibrational frequencies, or radio static, rather than the personal story of how we usually describe the push and pull of our existence. There are numerous practical applications that can take one into samadhi, pleasurable states of consciousness, and beyond.
In one early teaching, the Buddha defined an anupubbika magga or progressive path of practice that extends through three bhumis or realms of being from a Bodily Realm where a scientific, materialist view of the body holds sway, to an intermediate practice or Energetic Realm where a new dynamic view of our effervescent, ever changing, felt experience holds sway, and thirdly to a Formless Realm where a spacious view of the objects of the prior two Realms as appearing and disappearing holds sway. These finally all lead to nibbana, beyond and inseparable from the three Realms, accessible in the here and now in our lived, human experience.
Rest assured, we will focus on the fundamentals in this course. Right View is also fundamental and so although my description in the preceding paragraph may seem lofty, intimidating, or impossible in the near term for you, it is helpful to know before we begin our daylong pilgrmage together that we will focus on developing a basic energetics practice and not theory. Energetics are a way of both conceiving and realizing a whole life practice to its end. It's my deeply sincere wish to empower you in this understanding so that you're independent in your practice. It also is my deepest intention to empower your practice so that you can verify in your own experience how a fundamental awareness of energetics can activate the activating factors of awakening.
Your teachers for this event are Robert Rhyne and Greg Hermsmeyer.
The What to Bring: Please bring comfortable clothing, water bottle, a vegetarian dish to offer to the monks at a dana lunch and share with your fellow practitioners.
Monetary donations are optional. Learn more and register for this event at Dandelion Events: https://dandelion.events/e/q5zkh
