Audio: Toni Packer 2007

The following talks by Toni Packer are available on CD.

February 2007 Retreat

Day 1	Non-evaluating presence. Undivided sensing. Distrusting our images of others. (35 mins) Presence interrupts the process of see-name-interpret-judge. Things don't pass through the evaluation center: good or bad, pleasurable or dangerous in relation to "me." Undivided senses, participating without naming themselves - "now I'm seeing, now I'm hearing" Thinking we know people from memories of them is so lethal to our interrelationship.
Day 2	Loss and grief (36 mins) "How do you find the still point amid turbulence?" It's quite simple, though maybe not easy: just let the turbulence be. In awareness which is not awareness of things, let all come and go - it doesn't matter. What matters is this still point, which can't be brought about because it's here - just needs to be found, heard. Tacit plans shown up by loss for their meaninglessness, illusion. "Shouldn't we grieve?" I don't say "should" or "shouldn't": understand it deeply, and let the seeing end it.
Day 3	Effortlessness, "wu wei" (34 mins) Until the effortless state presents itself, we can't help effort-ing - we'll invariably be coming from thinking, intentions, goals "Effort" or "effortlessness" can be misleading terms. The question is, how does this life-energy (which we are - some manifestation) manifest? How still and collected can it be, gathered in non-striving? Not gathered toward something - no "toward" Wholeness, oneness, is our true natural condition. It takes thinking, doesn't it, to say "you over there, me over here?"
Day 5	What is conscience? Are there absolute right and wrong? (37 mins) The limbic system records experience with evaluation, good or bad. What we might think of as God-given conscience, most often was recorded in the past. "Forgiving" has always seemed to me something extra. If I see that someone couldn't have done otherwise, who am I either to blame or forgive? "We know so little of a killer's life! "Justice" considers an arbitrarily truncated biography. The total past of the universe, back to the Big Bang, manifests this moment of being. So in the relative world all right and wrong is arbitrary, human-made
Day 5	Tao Te Ching selections and commentary (Stephen Mitchell translation)