Audio: Toni Packer 2005

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

February 2005 Retreat

Day 1	Listening without inward or outward defense.
Day 2	When awareness & conditioning coexist. Belief in a doer.
Day 3	What is "effortless" awareness.
Day 5	What is attachment?
Day 6	How can I trust right action to come from long sitting?

July 2005 Retreat

Day 1	To realize how we live in assumptions. To be in awe of our own and others' unknowableness. We have as many sides as there are situations in this world. Strength to behold the shocking things awareness reveals in one. Strength that comes with freedom from identification.
Day 2	"Do you deny continuity?" I speak of seeing people freshly despite memory. The brain's amazing associativeness, its intricate encoding of the past. "The power of now." Moment by moment is totally sufficient, no need to deny anything - past, future. All is here; there's no room for continuity.
Day 3	"Are you a mystic?" A thing is mysterious until it isn't. Learning from sitting pain. How wanting to get rid of it increases it. To sit without thinking it should be blissful, without searching for meaning in pain. The wonder of first touching pain, after decades' assumption that it's untouchable. You don't need to make effort to hear. Just let go of the super-noise.
Day 5	Weary of war, bored with peace. Is there a peace not the opposite of war? Awared, anger's energy is released into awareness. Awareness is pure energy. The moment is creative, is creation itself. That's why silence: space for creativity. What can you be scared of that you face? Sounds trite, but when done, it's real. You don't need to make effort to hear. Just let go of the super-noise.
Day 6	"How can I be more attentive?" I don't have a scheme. Be more attentive! Brain pathways are reinforced or weakened by use and disuse. The listening is the rain, the whole thing! Or more pleasingly, "I am the whole thing." These are words, though. Sitting by yourself, nothing need be described. Everything we know fragments the universe a little bit.

August 2005 Retreat

Day 1	Listening without expectations. Watching inner images.
Day 2	What's the practice here? Slowing down in presence.
Day 3	Wanting what you have, not wanting what you don't have. Gutei's finger.
Day 5	What is the truth? Inquiry, not therapy. A single point of listening.
Day 6	Not knowing. Holistic sensing.

November 2005 Retreat

Day 1	Seeing without knowing. Fossil tensions - they have no function anymore? The body's conditioning to cram, as if for a test at the end of retreat? Acknowledging your real condition is a relief, not a chore. How amazing when a tone of voice that once raised your hackles stirs nothing.
Day 2	Catching limbic thoughts. Isn't the imagined "I" too clumsy, slow, inert, to act as we conventionally describe. Belief is substituted when we don't have evidence. Need I know, have a word, before I can hear the crow? This mode of wondering saves us from upset over what we discover in ourselves.
Day 3	When words, commands, drop out of a tension, it relaxes. It needs no "relax!" Amazing what can be heard and felt when the mind is open to receive. We have too little trust in letting be, the fullness and strength of letting be.
Day 5	To sit without expectation, despite memory and the drive for pleasure and not pain. "But humans also want truth" - examine freshly, is this truth-drive for pleasure? What is thought? Getting to the bottom of a question - open in not-knowing. Quiet breathing, attending. Where in the quietness of listening is there division between the "world" and "me?"
Day 6	Two koans: "Think neither good nor evil" and "Zuigan calls his master." Not just thinking, "there's neither good nor evil," but dualistic thinking vanishing. Awareness with no circumference of me and mine, and "the world" beyond it. Krishnamurti's "goodness that has no opposite." In the state of thinking neither good nor evil, could we say that's pure goodness? We don't even need that word. That's the beauty of it, there's no defining it or us.

Sunday Programs and Other Talks

Feb. 13	What is being sought in religion? Is attachment for protection? For security? A description of "the work of this moment."
Apr. 24	Relative and absolute truth.
June 26	Conventional and meditative learning.
Aug. 21	Mindfulness of emotionally weighted speech as the building block of world strife.
Aug. 28	The pursuit of happiness.
Nov. 27	A "guided meditation."