Audio: Toni Packer 1994

The following talks by Toni Packer are available on audio tape only.

February 1994 Retreat

Day 1	Listening; authority. What is real relationship? What am I here for? Is there a practice? What am I supposed to do? Expectation. The wholeness that is love.
Day 2	Why am I here at this retreat? What does "here" mean? Is there a practice to get us here? Pain in sitting. Posture.
Day 3	Fear. Why the identification with this body-mind, the attachment to our life story? Why the fear of pure, bare being? Is that the same fear as the fear of dying? Being on a silent retreat without smiling or talking.
Day 4	Why do the talks always look at "negative" things such as fear or anger? Is it possible to be with people who really push my buttons (like my parents) without that happening? Images of other people. Is there a relationship between seeing thoughts and compassion? Awareness sounds so detached, dry, intellectual - where's the love in this work? Mistaking thinking for seeing. Openness of discovery goes with opening of the heart - it's the same openness.
Day 5	Time. Nothing is ever taking place any time but now. Thinking about something creates a reality. Impermanence. Hurt. Is it possible not to get hurt by what people say? Why do we get hurt? Not identifying with what is seen.
Day 6	Self-image. Wanting a permanent identity. What is identity? What am I truly? What should I do with my life? Can we be here in all simplicity without becoming anything? This moment is unknowable.

April 1994 Retreat

Day 1	Listening. Authority. Image-making.
Day 2	Identification. Suffering.
Day 3	Effort and effortlessness. Energy and resistance. Discipline.
Day 4	Fear.
Day 5	Loving is dying.
Day 6	Quiet. Choice.

June 1994 Retreat

Day 1	A new kind of listening, looking and being.
Day 2	Guilt. Is there a doer of good & bad deeds? The urge to do something about what is seen in oneself.
Day 3	Thoughts and attachment. A chaotic mind and the desire to make order.
Day 4	Why is the present moment so important? Why not the past or the future? Psychological time. Questioning the necessity or all identity and identification. Receiving criticism.
Day 7	The mind of wanting. This knot of me-ness.
Day 8	Right livelihood. The relationship between sitting in retreat and daily life. Conflict with others.
Day 9	Is there a Springwater vocabulary? Arrogance. Fear of dying. Is there a soul? Love and compassion.

July 1994 Retreat

Day 1	A new listening. Walking alone, without authority. A relationship of respect. Where do thoughts come from?
Day 2	Sadness. Experiencing without concepts or resistance. The connection between thinking and feeling. What to do about all the sorrow in the world. Not knowing what to do. No control. The power of stories.
Day 3	How to meditate. Our problem-solving compulsion. Unforced listening; everything happening on its own.
Day 4	What am I without thoughts and images? The danger of images. Becoming aware of images as they arise, and of goals and ideas about what we should do. Questioning the "I" that is behind all this. Descending from concepts into what is really happening.
Day 5	What is this "I"?
Day 6	Can pure listening affect the chain of hurt and retaliation? Is hurt and vengeance inevitable? The restlessness of trying. What is the meeting point of so-called relative and absolute realities?

August 1994 Retreat

Day 1	The openness of unprotected listening. Authority. Our relationship with Toni. What are we this moment without our personalities or histories?
Day 2	Is just being in the here & now enough? What does comparison do when it arises? Victimization and humiliation. Identifying oneself as a victim.
Day 3	Awareness. Despair over thinking. Awareness is a different body from thinking. What is significant, the objects we see or the seeing itself? Remaining with the seeing.
Day 4	What does it mean to be with fear or anger? The work of this moment is not to get rid of things or overcome them, but to illuminate, to see.
Day 7	What is meditation? How simple can awareness be? Do practices re-create the "me"? Time. When we get into the mode of suffering, what is happening? Addiction to storyline. The continuous challenge of being alive, every moment of upset an opportunity.
Day 8	s Toni the central attraction here? Dependency on Toni. What is the essence of presence? Not knowing.
Day 9	Awareness without demands, injunctions, or judgments. Not knowing what we are.

September 1994 Retreat

Day 1	Listening freshly with the whole body. How knowledge distorts listening. Communicating with care. Questioning what we are.
Day 2	Hearing without labeling. The inner demand for authority. A relationship of mutual respect.
Day 3	Being present without a focal point. What is really going on, without words and thoughts about it? The human bodymind revealing itself.
Day 4	Emotion. What do we mean by emotion? Guilt. Coming in touch with what is not conditioned.
Day 5	Seeing thought and image. Identification with the story of one's life. Not going with the momentum of reaction. The thought that "something is missing". Desire for fulfillment.
Day 6	Commitment. Can one come upon what is happening without the burden of commitment? Silence, quietude reveals what is going on. What is the basis of moral or ethical behavior in this work of being here moment to moment?

November 1994 Retreat

Day 1	How simple can perception be? Does expectation affect listening? Authority - images of each other. What are we in relationship to each other?
Day 2	Awareness without concentration. Does sitting quietly have to entail doing battle with what one regards as disturbances and distractions that intrude against one's will? Letting everything unfold in awareness.
Day 3	Pain and anger. What is pain? Listening spaciously, not knowing. Watching the storyline that keeps anger going. We're all what we are this moment due to infinite causes.
Day 4	The deeply felt need to be somebody, to be affirmed by others, and the hurt when it doesn't happen. The best time to look is when we're hurt. What has been punctured? What are we? Are we the mental productions, the imagery to which there is such attachment? Alive space without a me-center, live silent space.
Day 5	How to be with ourselves and each other in the face of deep feelings of insufficiency. Respect. Being here one moment at a time, not losing touch with the ground of now-ness. Deep-seated fear of being wrong. Listening to criticism without defending, attacking, rationalizing, or going with the story of "my innocence". Holding still and looking openly. Addiction to flattery, being liked, positive feedback. Preferences. Impatience - wanting quick results. This work is one's whole life.
Day 6	Being here now; dying to the story. Doing this work outside of retreat. Are we afraid of the story coming to an end? If one is interested in reincarnation or rebirth, why not watch it now? Is it possible to witness the rebirth of "myself" right now?