Audio: Toni Packer 2006

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

February 2006 Retreat

Day 1	Becoming aware of the movement of striving. Letting inward listening stand on its own, not directed to something. Listening from moment to moment without knowing what will happen. Feeling hectic, when awared, slows down, and vision grows clearer. (34 mins)
Day 2	Attention or awareness? Is it both? What is constant? What makes seeing possible, what's always here behind the obvious? Examining ideas of free choice and motivation. (38 mins)
Day 3	What is the difference between thinking and awareness? "I like" or "I don't like" thinking. Letting things come and go in awareness. What facilitates awareness? Or rather, what hinders it? When nothing's directing the show, awareness flows beautifully. Staying with a burning question vs. striving for an answer. (52 mins)
Day 5	What gets hurt? Just this assemblage of images? In self-preoccupation there's no room for anything else, everything feels outside. When self-preoccupation abates, what's inside and outside then? Only hereness. When you feel separate - have a look, let it go. See it and be done with it. Don't "work on it," that gives energy to the whole sad thing. (34 mins)
Day 6	Choicelessly awaring how the mind moves and chooses. Naming requires sequence. In sitting, all can be as it is naturally, simultaneously. Everything's there, and nothing - nothing's made into a thing by the brain. Does choicelessness depend on grace? The body-mind changes through sitting. What is a distraction? Let meditation absorb all in its path. (44 mins)

July 2006 Retreat

Day 1	The wakefulness of meditation is unmatched by other wakings, such as from sleep. In awakeness, there's no difference between you and me without thought. There are no separations in this world, non-separation is the only real thing. (37 mins)
Day 2	Must one develop a self before dropping it? Self-images have developed. What's of great importance is getting to know them. Infant events we don't even remember contribute to self-image. No intention involved. Love which is selfless, unintentional, has little to do with early experiences. (40 mins)
Day 3	Listening enters awareness not as something to be done, but something happening. "The observer is the observed." This infinite world of sights, sounds, sensations, and no one directing the show. If you think you're directing, that's a thought among thoughts. Who is the observer, the listener? Watch carefully when you ask that, the response "me" seems shallow. (41 mins)
Day 6	It's hard to be with what's given, which includes ourselves. We don't know ourselves! We know only images. What is the real me? What am I apart from the story about me? Is that the endeavor of our lives, to work on these images? Futile, nothing real to it. Everything is available to silent not-knowing, beyond comprehension. (41 mins)

August 2006 Retreat

Day 1	What's the practice here? Nothing special. The mind learning to empty itself of the weight it has carried for millennia. Sinking into meditation, it's plain that this mind, thought, has no "me" or "you" to it. To become aware of the great weight of prejudice in every corner of the mind. Is there a spot in us where conditioning has never touched? Clear seeing is already the change in a human being. (38 mins)
Day 2	Sitting late at night, what is tiredness? Investigation leaves a new mass of energy. The mind learning to empty itself of the weight it has carried for millennia. The darkness of not-knowing has infinite potential. Not-knowing doesn't need our ordinary, measly light. (38 mins)
Day 3	Fear of being nobody. Is comfort available elsewhere than in hopeful thought? The vast space of awareness, presence, behind all of the five senses. Awareness brings the senses to light and is unchanged from infancy to old age. Of course I'm here - if pinched, it hurts. (39 mins)
Day 5	What do we mean by mind? Transparent thoughts mean transparent mind. When observation is direct, concrete, beyond ideas, something wonderful happens. There's no "me" who directs it all, associations jump, electrochemically. The ancient conditioned reflex to feel guity for no reason. (41 mins)
Day 6	Consciousness vs. awareness. Awareness doesn't move like thought, just spreads, illuminates, with no intention. What have I done wrong? Anxiety often has to do with the past, not the present. What gets hurt? When inquired into, hurt starts peeling like sunburn. (46 min)

November 2006 Retreat

Day 1	The shift from thinking to seeing thoughts. A huge difference. An internal MRI - seeing how body and mind swing and harmonize with moods. In awaring thoughts, many false thoughts drop away. What have you been thinking when happy or sad? Been thinking there's a "me" in the middle of it all, directing the show? (32 mins)
Day 2	"I'm not defensive!" In transparency it's so much easier to let something go. "Happy anticipation floods away present awareness." So what to do? Nothing to do! Just let awareness throw light on it, be as a mirror. The future's a hologram, that's all. So what's going on this moment? It's so simple. Awareness isn't developing muscles to get rid of things. (41 mins)
Day 3	A son who doesn't take account of the future. Can parental anxiety abate with the direct realization that there is no future, no past. Only memories and projections. Have to think about the future for there to be one. There's enough to see in the mind for a lifetime. You don't have to study much else. Awareness is not something attainable and usable. In effortlessness, awareness is there, with no one to want it or use it. (38 mins)
Day 5	The use of words for meditative work doesn't always translate easily to daily use. Sharper listening and looking in not-knowing, no thought structures in the way. A virgin field of looking and listening. Effortlessness. Bracing against pain is the worst pain. Allow it to embrace you and there are no longer two, so no problem. (39 mins)
Day 6	"What is violence?" On a subtler level, any separation from what is. In concordance with your fate. Allowing suffering may be the end of suffering. "Why do painful memories recur and recur?" The intelligence of being still when pain surfaces, let it show itself entirely. It's not "my" forgiveness, non-judgment is the nature of understanding. (42 mins)

Sunday Programs and Other Talks

Feb. 12	Question is not how to make each moment new, but can we realize its newness? Our true nature is not full of memories. It's this ever-refreshed being, new, as we've never been before. The depth of habit and the newness of each moment. (32 mins)
Apr. 23	The inward projection of images of "me." The arising of conflict when the image "I" is not acknowledged. (31 mins))
Apr. 24	Relative and absolute truth.
Nov. 26	An empty mind, a mind of nothing in particular, is the most ready and responsive. The brain's infinite associativeness. An empty mind at talk time, electricity courses through pathways and connections.