Audio: Toni Packer 2003

The following talks by Toni Packer are available on both CD and audio tape.

February 2003 Retreat

Day 1	Toni's physical condition. The body is geared to expect. The blaze of thought-mobilized sensations: who's doing all this? There can be listening without sounds.
Day 2	"Nothing exciting happening now." The only exciting thing in the universe is when the mind is open. Transition from awaring to being awareness. It's all here, all "I" - not as a solace, not to regale the I, it's a fact. Watching TV. Attention reveals thoughts are about becoming something - a brain mis-function.
Day 3	"Isn't there a sadness which is not wallowing, but deep and in touch?" The possibility of real communication, despite the structure of language. "I want to catch the moment when inattention takes over." Dialoguing smoothly, without the blockage of taking offense.
Day 5	What's meant by "not knowing," "thought is limited"? Goethe's Faust. What am I beyond all I know, and have been told I am? Amazing: our whole history, a history of posturing - as this or that. Moments have no time duration.
Day 6	A whole view of a situation, clearing the confusion of seeing our wishes alone. "What's the transition from a quiet mind to unconstricted openness?" A quiet mind is itself total questioning, if it is not-knowing. Bankei: the very mind that hears the dog bark, and instantly discerns, is Buddha-mind. Can a decision ripen and fall of itself?

April 2003 Retreat

Day 1	Intentions are a product of the very limited conscious mind. The important thing is not how long I wake up for, but what happens when I come to. Everything is worth noticing because noticing is worthwhile. We're built to be affected by our environment, learn from it, imitate. A wonderful discovery: we don't have to try to hear things - just slow down, relax. You're the worst judge of if you've changed - we think of ourselves in habitual patterns!
Day 2	Why does a person do what they know better than to do? The transformation of directed into non-directed energy - habit into awareness. Watch anger not so you can banish it, but so you can write your Ph.D. on it. Two approaches to "What am I?" Sat-chit-ananda and sat-shit-ananda.
Day 3	If not told what we are in childhood - bright dull pretty ugly - would we would atrophy? The goodness of listening to another, being listened to. Real contact vs. the "begging bowl for sympathy." With aliveness to all our true being here, inferiority is not so much a factor. Deepest fear that I'm not important - not worthwhile. Roots of religion: magic to counter women's potent childbearing magic?
Day 5	"Don't mix the spiritual and political, Toni - remember your authoritative position." There are things one can say about war that are not judgment, opinion. War does irreparable harm; children with big eyes, no smile. I don't say conditioning stops "forever" - stopping is forever. Not-knowing.
Day 6	"How can I cease to be obsessed with, forget, myself?" What we know about ourselves is not being. Is asking 'why' each thought the wrong kind of question?" The 'I' has no control over the torrent of thought - is part of the torrent. The embedded template of the womb.

July 2003 Retreat

Day 1	A different kind of listening. Authority. What is it that wants to put itself together again? Can you simply look at green hills without the thought "What do I do with this?" A new listening with openness that doesn't depend on knowing. This talk is not to establish authority - a habitual mind may interpret it that way.
Day 2	To "be with" boredom is not enough: really plumb it - it has so many tentacles. To marvel at our impermanence, changeability. Questioning boredom: what's wrong with what's here right now? Thinking something through while sitting.
Day 3	Pain versus suffering. Being with pain without sagging spirits, loss of energy. The Buddha's "All life inherently contains suffering." "It took me so many years, but now there's joy in sitting quietly, being in touch."
Day 5	There has been a decision, but is there a decider. Killing: swatting deer flies, mosquitoes, etc. Carry away not the conclusion "Toni says there's no choice," but the question. Do I refrain from killing as there's no need to or because fearing karmic retribution.
Day 6	Attachments reveal themselves particularly when times are thin, boring and sparse. Me-concern collapses awareness; intelligent new thinking does not. Why do we not seem to wake up to presence so easily while literally asleep? The moment before an enlightenment experience - had you wanted it? I've never had anyone answer "yes." Keeping open the question, "What is enlightenment?"

August 2003 Retreat

Day 1	Two kinds of well-being - from thought and from one knows not where. To think independently. Watching "how do I listen." Hard to detect because we're unaware we don't listen. "What's wrong with fantasizing? It's when I'm happiest."
Day 2	People have varying abilities in concentrated attention. In open awareness there's no one who has to do anything. The misleading idea of "sudden enlightenment." "Hearing other teachers can sow doubts: is there more I haven't experienced?" The concern for continuity of presence is conditioning.
Day 3	"Is there a taboo here against engagement in the world, politics?" Kensho in Vietnam. Can the world be changed? Physiological changes through insight. Anger.
Day 5	"Thinking" taking time, vs. intelligent memory which acts instantly and appropriately. Perception unobstructed by ego concerns is free. "Am I wasting my life?" doesn't arise then - the world doesn't lack. Has our species made progress? Does one take for granted that the world is created?
Day 6	Is fatalism propagated here? There is a freedom to change - but it doesn't come about in the usual willful ways. Seeing that no one is doing conditioned thought, I don't have to be guilty. Brain science and meditation.

November 2003 Retreat

Day 1	All comes and goes in this light and empty presence, full of love and wisdom. To know the unchanging unshakably and directly. It's not negative to speak of our obstructions, in seeing them is the joy of discovery. The feeling of "not enough" when in nature - the wish to philosophize and want more. In listening really preciously, intently, the brain doesn't file things.
Day 2	To confront or not to confront someone? Is it necessary to express anger? What is the relieving factor in confessing all we feel guilty about to someone? Genuine sorrow differs from guilt, which includes fear of retribution.
Day 3	Can presence and wakefulness be cultivated, nourished? Can the body, with so much momentum behind it to be self-centered, change? Change not just in one unanticipated moment, but as a way of being? The increasing capacity to be with nature, or with the turns of a group dialogue. Awareness has always been with one - only its manifestation changes over time.
Day 5	Habits need the field of inattention. Is inner nagging needed when you have unfinished business with someone? The desire for confession. Confessing in honest words - not spinning a new tale. Guilt seeks the dark.
Day 6	"What do you mean, 'All in the world is in its right place?"' Terrorist acts are labelled "heinous murders" - but what are we, am I, doing? Let's round out the picture, make it as wide as the whole universe. "Am I making the most of my life?" Examining the language: "me" and "my life" which I must make something of.
Day 6	Loss of a loved one. If you have shared much, fractures a shared energy field. A flicker of an urge to console myself, "We'll meet again." The realization this was imagination: here was a dead Kyle. I didn't approach loss theologically or philosophically. Only being here helped. The ruptured energy field does have a way of healing. Mary Oliver's poem The Sun.

California New Year's Retreat 2003-04

Day 1	What are group meetings for? What is listening and looking? When the brain comes to the state where there is a realization that "I don't know." Then maybe the brain quiets down in the vast space of not-knowing. Optimally speak out of now, not out of memory: "What is here?" not "What was it?" Is it possible to listen without expectation of what is going to happen?
Day 2	Why am I here? Why do people go to silent retreats? Quieting down in the middle of "upset." Letting the "upset" reveal itself in stillness. Listening into a deep well of not-knowing, which is the wholeness of consciousness. What is at the root bottom of it all? Everything is meetable - that is the beauty of living with awareness.
Day 3	Is a body necessary for awareness? Why do we want to know that? Recognizing theoretical concerns. What matters is what is deeply understood in ourselves. The story about ourselves and the incomprehensible attachment to this story. What is the purpose of this work? There is no purpose. Do it purely. But there are side effects.
Day 5	What is loneliness? Enmeshed in the story our individual life, we feel cut off. Bubble existence and isolation. Lonely because we want to find, but can't, the listener who is truly interested in us? Funny story about Bailey, the dog who lives next door. Can a wellspring of love burst the bubble of isolated, personal existence? I don't have a wellspring of love; others do, poor me," is a new story.
Day 6	What is despair? Warfare and feeling helpless and hopeless. The need to achieve something with one's life. We are here. Is that enough? "Am I in a story right now?" Noticing the attachment to the story. Being here is our true nature. This absolute is always here. It's here. It doesn't attach any strings. It depends on nothing. Can there be a waking up to it out of this chaotic life of ours?

Sunday Programs and Other Talks

Feb. 16	Does illness tend to reinforce "me"? Manifestations of "me": revenge, self-righteousness, the sense of being violated. You can say "group identification is the most natural human thing," yes, it is! But it needs to be watched, it can be questioned. Why is it hard to listen openly, without the cage of what you want to hear?
Mar. 23	We cannot become as we would wish out of sheer desire to be that way. Propaganda and euphemism in wartime. The great challenge of objectivity and impartiality, the fear of standing alone.
Mar. 30	What's the difference between fact and interpretation? We're non-separate: only ideas about me and you separate us. If the best way to know oneself is in relationship, then why sit isolated from it?
June 29	Why sit here? What do you want? What is your goal? The body-mind craves stillness. What is in the way of being here right now? Is it worthwhile finding out? What is the significance of noticing what is happening? Take note and let go. Awareness doesn't change. Always this new moment.
Aug. 24	Brain science and meditation. Scientists in conversation with Dalai Lama; Daniel Goleman's Destructive Emotions. What is compassion? Are ethics and precepts necessary? Meditation is when there's no motive.
Aug. 31	Gossip: to let off steam, as entertainment. Difficulty speaking directly to people instead of behind their backs. Criticism and defensiveness or identification. Secretiveness and privacy.
Nov. 23	Presence-energy's power to disconnect grief circuitry of thoughts. What's the use of this silent sitting? Aroused energy, and energy that seems to gather out of nowhere. "How has waking up come about? What's the way to it?" is unknowable except after. The human trait of desiring revenge, punishment.
Nov. 30	What is impatience? Patientce doesn't mean to endure, but to watch and question. No resistance to finding out the truth about ourselves: that's the first prerequisite. Someone's building an unflattering image of me - so what? See what's going on. Exposing defensiveness as unnecessary: we are not images, not picture galleries.