Audio: Toni Packer 2002

The following talks by Toni Packer are available on CD.

February-March 2002 Retreat

Day 1	Finding a new way to listen. To hear with one's eyes and to see with one's ears. Listening includes the totality of sensing. Not a willed process. What keeps us plugged up?
Day 2	Who is responsible for what we are doing if there is no "I", no self? Individual, cultural, and social responsibility. Whether or not there is a "me" is the challenge of retreat. What is the practice here?
Day 3	Attention and inattention. Where is the question coming from? Waking up from inattentiveness. Being more and more honest with watching how we live. Being on the edge of nothing as no one. Nothing to be afraid of.
Day 5	What is belief and what is here? How does belief get formed? What are its motives? The comfort of belief. Mechanisms to avoid facing fear and resistance. Compulsive problem-solving. Escape.
Day 6	Movement and stillness. Seeing movements of the mind. A quietness not the result of obedience. Toni's relationship to her parents. Fear of separation.

April 2002 Retreat

Day 1	Constant rushing to do something, get someplace. Movement towards or away from. Motion, which we can't help, because there is no we - only motion. How absurd to think, "I shouldn't have" - it's just happened. See how expectations limit and focus the mind. Hui Neng's first vow - to free beings in my own mind.
Day 2	Brain interprets talk on how expectations block listening as "Don't expect!" Toni's expectations in early relationships. A sense of what the other needs and wants is essence of a good relationship. "Expectations? We knew each other! What more was there to expect?" You find out your identifications when you're defensive. The gulf between the words, "live in the moment," and the real thing.
Day 3	Are images all there is to relationship? Is a true stability available? Discerning thoughts from direct seeing. Listening fully to another. Insufficiency underlying the mind's agitation in relationship. Without the idea "relationship," what distance is there to bridge?
Day 5	What is meant by "images"? Images of Toni as beyond images, etc. What's the purpose of human life - if it's not for self-improvement, doing, and getting. To be with what is, instead of wishing it were different. A palpably different way of being. The ferment of the creative mind.
Day 6	Can we set aside ideas about silence? Not sound's absence - rather, no resistance. Silence amid daily life's turbulence. You don't have to be right in an argument - let the other win! Discussion of Vimala Thakar's "What is silence?"

July 2002 Retreat

Day 1	Dropping resistance to being the way you are, to the way others are. Resistance is not applicable to this moment of presence. Experience one resistance, and you experience them all. "I see with my eyes, hear with my ears" - that's thinking. Undivided sensing. Amazing how the fear of hearing something said prevents hearing it. Yielding - the willingness to drown, to go under.
Day 2	Is there a remedy for humanity? To be relieved of our patterns? When worry arises about doing enough for the world - notice, am I awake now? Effortlessness doesn't mean sitting without energy. When effortlessness is absent, the conditioned mind is there, which makes effort.
Day 3	States don't linger as much as stories. The Indian tradition of, "I am not my body." Fear, shock, trauma, numbness. Brain is not programmed to feel fear and pain. We want to feel comfortable, like in the womb. Fear can't be known! Useless to travel in the field of knowledge.
Day 5	Insecurity of dithering - should I sit or walk? What chooses? Brain research and direct observation show body mobilizes before conscious decision. Saying "I" all the time, we believe it! We believe in the chooser.
Day 6	Fear of dying. The quandary of dissent in an atmosphere of one-voice. Kyle's schoolteaching challenges. Nazi Germany and present-day America. Not knowing when stereotyping arises within.

August 2002 Retreat

Day 1	We've never seen a moment like this before - only knowing makes it rote. Listening to divides the listener from what she hears. We can never really share each other's thought-worlds - but these are surface worlds.
Day 2	Why do you always talk about thought and not the body? Going into the body. The great doubt: what sense does it make to be here, in pain? Stories aren't just thought - they're told by the whole body. What is the difference between awareness and going into something?
Day 3	Would there be gods if there were no fear? The stark realization that there is no security - and the new security therein. Insensitivity of the drive to enhance and enrich myself. Asking a question - until imagination comes to an end and the question remains.
Day 5	What are my needs? Weaving our various needs into a tapestry of no conflict, no resentment. Needs overlaying the feeling of lack - when we live on the level of me and you. A truly kind deed has no desire for recognition.
Day 6	In a couple: put all the cards face up on the table and see. Why are we together, why do we want to be apart? Being kind to oneself, or being clear about oneself? Beginning to hear how one talks, acts, detecting subtle motives. Presence is coming back to our senses, also prsence of mind.

November 2002 Retreat

Day 1	Comparison - structuring in the brain of what someone should and shouldn't say. Imagery is what gets hurt. A highway breakdown and a kind young nursing student. Only immediacy of relationship can heal our world. Listening is openness of the senses - but it's not the senses that listen and look.
Day 2	"So many thoughts still." Being with, in touch, is wonderful - but wondering can be deeper. Wondering where does this come from? Who? Pleasure and pain both encapsulate the mind. Don't be afraid of the darkness of not-knowing - the light of knowing is dim.
Day 3	Sitting quietly versus questioning. Effort is when "me"-wanting directs effort toward getting. If "I"-consciousness is painful and false, why hasn't evolution resolved it? Good questions: Am I viewing this situation wholly or partially? What is separation? There must be awakening before the sound, mantram, gatha used to recall awareness.
Day 5	Who is the observer? Krishnamurti's, "The observer is the observed." Using meditation as a repressive device. "What do you mean 'no self?' I look out these eyes, I gesture..." Children learning "me" and "mine." Just the simple body image - or more than simple functioning requires? Pretty, ugly.
Day 6	What do you mean by "groundedness" in meditative inquiry? See with insight that the word is an abstraction, and need not separate. Language doesn't separate until the thought of myself - being or having something. What's the value of group meetings in retreat, with all they stir up? Group meetings are calisthenics of the brain.

Sunday Programs and Other Talks

Feb. 17	Thoughts and emotions. Simply being here, not as a concept but actually. The ever present urge to go into thought when there is resistance. The speed and volume of thought. Can thought quiet down in silent attention?
Mar. 31	Watching movement in the space of stillness. Is there an entity within that needs to be conquered? Can we watch without holding an idea of how we ought to be? Where is the borderline between inside and outside? Listening to the sounds of the wall, its numbness.
June 30	I'm using the word "digging," but really it's just not moving away. You don't have to listen to anything - it's here! Learning about ourselves in action - not theoretically. Moods shifting in quiet sitting, without any problem solved.
Aug. 25	Attention - being present, alert, alive. "There are traumas to be touched in the body - 'Hear the crows' is a distraction." Trances - golf, writing, etc. Do animals have awareness?
Sep. 1	What does it mean to "be with" depression, pain? Questioning belief systems, which are formed to bind and submerge anxiety. Difference between the bare facts and the story about them.
Nov. 24	Use and avoidance of the personal pronoun. Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche's, "Thought-free wakefulness." Shifting of the ratio of thought to presence. Returning from thoughts to the task at hand is not an escape.