Fall 2011 Shamatha Retreat

We come to our very last session with a meditation on loving kindness and dedication of merit (0:50) Afterwards our group prepared such a lovely closing ceremony that we figured other people might like to cultivate some empathetic joy :) Thank you for listening! If you found these wonderful teachings beneficial and would like to help continue this vision, please consider making a donation to help support all these projects You can do so by going to http://www.sbinstitute.com/donations

Alan leads the group, who has started talking now, through a shamatha session (02:13) designed to bring the mind down from agitation to calm. He speaks to a question (35:53) regarding the Dzogchen view of rigpa and the extent to which one can provide a reason as to why one who awakens from the dream of reality won’t fall asleep again. Note: The first 5 or 10 seconds were missing because Alan started talking before the computer had finished loading. Sorry about that! We were coming back from our (hectic) group photo session so he was talking about that, and that's also why this session is shorter.

There are three strategies to protect from the tornado of thoughts in the mind. The first is to go to a shelter which is mindfulness of breathing – releasing and releasing the thoughts. The second is the tornado chasers who learn a great deal about tornadoes without getting caught in them – that is settling the mind in its natural state. The third is to go up into the tornado and come out on the other side in the expanse of blue sky – that is awareness of awareness. Silent meditation starts at 04:18 Questions (29:02) Were the four immeasurable taught as a part of the year of shamatha practice with Gen Lamrimpa? Could you discuss further the role of the observer participant related to frozen time.

Silent meditation (no introduction) starts at 0:18 Questions (25:28): 1. Comment on the concepts of time and space. 2. What role do the “Hidden Lands” play in the context of Buddhist practice? 3. In the Vajrayana, there is the practice of the illusory body. Is there anything like this in the Mahayana? What is the concept of “wilderness” in practice? 4. What is the role of devotion and reverence in practice? 5. Pondering the metaphor of the carriage and the Four Immeasurables being like four horses, I have explored what the other parts of the metaphor are in my own practice. For example, the reins (which must be held not too tight or not too loose) are the discipline of my practice in the hands of the driver—who might be inattentive or alert, a good driver or not so good on any given day. The wheels and undercarriage are the Four Thoughts that Turn the Mind (Precious human existence, Death and Impermanence, the Law of Karma, and the Defects of Samsara). Who is inside the carriage (a passive passenger or a master who knows the destination and the route to it and can keep the driver going in the right direction). Are there other interpretations? A similar metaphor appears in the Upanishads. Is there an expanded metaphor in Buddhist text?

This last Monday afternoon’s session, which we can say that is indispensable to listen to, Alan offered a huge number of pieces of advice that are extremely useful for those that are going to do a long retreat, for those that are going to meet their daily activities and for all of us that want to keep practicing Dharma the rest of our lives: how can we deal and respond to the eroding of our Shamatha practice and the striking back of our OCDD? What is a balanced Dharma practice and the role of Shamatha within it? With the aspiration of undertaking a long retreat: how to avoid a waiting attitude and neglecting the practice in the present day? How to avoid being like the cat that is either flapping in the surface of a pond or sinking to its bottom, but rather become like the happy elephant in a long term retreat? Also, how to avoid expectations but keeping joy and gratitude during it? What to do when we have days during which we cannot even count until three? And most important: how is our Dharma practice affecting our way of viewing reality, others and our values? And many many more jewels that you will find in this session with inspiring anecdotes. So as you can see, Alan has been very generous again. Then as it is usual for these last days, the session was in silence (51:24), followed by two questions (76:26): clarifications about the sequence of Shamatha methods taught in Padmasambhava’s Natural Liberation; and how to keep inspiration, faith and enthusiasm for our practice as Westerners? So, please make yourself comfortable and enjoy… See you around

In this session Alan reminds us that shamatha is designed to dispel the 5 obscurations and as the imbalances are built-in, the remedies are also built-in. In the same way, among the 4 Immeasurables one naturally arises as the remedy for the near enemy of another one. For Loving Kindness' facsimile which is self centered attachment, the remedy is Equanimity For Compassion's facsimile which is depression, grief, despair, the remedy is Empathetic Joy For Empathetic Joy's facsimile which is frivolous joy or hedonic fixation, the remedy is Loving Kindness For Equanimity's facsimile, which is aloof indifference, the remedy is Compassion Silent meditation starts at 4:08 Questions (29:10): • How do the 4 immeasurables transform into bodhichitta and into the stages of a bodhisattva. Is there any text you would recommend? • What happens when one realizes emptiness? Does it happen in meditation? Do your senses go dormant or the opposite? Can you lose it? • If a being in the bardo chooses parents not only out of karma, but out of wisdom, why would we choose, for instance, to be born in Africa from parents who are starving? • According to Tibetan culture, to have a few consorts at the same time as some lamas do, is not against ethical values? • Can you tell a little bit about the range of ways of working with the fear that is holding us back from seeing things the way they are? There is much evidence right in front of us but it seems like our hearts and minds uncontrollably prefer to remain blind and ignorant to it. • The Dharma has been described as the law of nature or as encompassing the nature of reality. If that is true, then sentient beings are involved in the dharma, whether they are formal students of it or not. For instance, I have met people who show an intuitive understanding of Buddhist concepts without any exposure to the teachings. • In a sense that we are all bumbling through the universe of our experience, some more skillfully than others, perhaps, just like the early cosmologists bumbling their way through heavens, such reflections help me with humility, with connectedness and with devotion to wellsprings of life itself.

For those of us returning to our ordinary lives, Alan suggests that we avail ourselves of all the shamatha practices depending on our body and mind at that moment. For those of us continuing in retreat, Alan suggests that we focus primarily on one practice and deepen that. Non-guided meditation (7:18) on shamatha practice of our choice. Questions (33:02) Q1a) It takes one countless eon to achieve the Path of Seeing. Why not take the shravaka path of realizing selflessness and using that wisdom from the very start? Q1b) Where are we after achieving shamatha and vipashyana? Q2a) Please tell us about Sakya Dagmo-la Q2b) What is Samantabhadra’s pure land of Akanishta? Q3) Who are Alan’s 2 principal teachers? Q4a) How can we practice shamatha during ngöndro? Q4b) I haven’t had any success with lucid dreaming, so are there easier practices? Q5) Please give advice on preparing for retreat. Q6) In Settling the Mind, is there subtle preference in letting thoughts arise in free association? Q7) Since dzogchen is less complex and possibly easier for realizing clear light mind, why did the New Translation Schools move away from this towards the stages of generation and completion practices?

After a silent meditation (1:40) Alan gives an overview and brief ‘how to guide’ of lucid dreaming and dream yoga. Then questions (67:20) include eyes closing as we progress along the path of mindfulness of breathing, the use of tonglen for shamatha and discussion of the life of Dudjom Lingpa and other great Dzogchen masters.

Reading from Vajra Essence regarding the difference between consciousness, substrate consciousness and Rigpa. Meditation on awareness of awareness expanding out to all directions (26:30) Questions (51:23) How does the "naked" healing process of the mind by way of settling the mind happen with other shamatha methods? How lasting or fleeting are the changes to the coarse and subtle bodies caused by altering the flow of prana through shamatha practice? Person getting headaches from meditation – what suggestions to prevent it? Question related to rigpa being necessary to explain extrasensory perception such as precognition and remote viewing What is meant by the compassionate display of rigpa? Difficulty seeing rigpa as compassionate. Question regarding how to move away from not liking oneself and feeling guilty over past unwholesome activities.

Dharma talk and meditation on Awareness of Awareness with the focus on the observer: Is there someone in there? The Bahiya (of the Garment) Sutra. Bahiya received a short discourse from the Buddha and immediately became an arhat. Bahiya was a merchant who had sailed the seas. On his eighth voyage, he was shipwrecked and washed ashore naked. He used the flotsam on the beach to cover himself and the local villagers saw him and thought he was a holy man. He became well-regarded as an arhat from whom the villagers often asked spiritual and mundane advice. Eventually Bahiya began to wonder if he was, indeed, an arhat. However a feminine diva appeared to him and said that he was not, but that he should go to the Buddha who could give him instructions. Bahiya walks a long way across India to find the Buddha and asks on three different occasions for instruction. The third time, the Buddha consents and gives the short discourse on selflessness. Bahiya becomes immediately liberated as an arhat. Three days later, he is gored by a cow and dies. There is no self/observer/agent inside, outside or in between. There is no correlate to a self in the brain. After the horrible period between about 1400 and 1750 which saw the bubonic plague and witch hunts, there was a rise in science and a mechanistic view of the world. This continues today despite enormous evidence to the contrary. 96% of the universe is metaphysical (i.e. it can’t be measured; physicists call it “black matter” and “black energy”). Everything we experience is appearances – non-physical (although there is a physical existence). What we see is the space of the mind. Being awake is dreaming with physical constraints. Dreaming is waking experience without physical constraints. The universe is enchanted with consciousness. Meditation starts at 57:44 No Question and Answer session this time.

Deep…During this extremely inspiring afternoon, Alan started by explaining how to recognize the object of attention of the practice of awareness of awareness for those that find this practice elusive. Also he explained, with the parallel of mosquitoes flying around a fan, how the oscillation works against thoughts. At the end, this practice leads to resting the mind into luminosity and emptiness. After this clarification, he went on to present his opinion of some aspects of how is being presented the dharma related to these degenerated times. We should try to avoid to be playing the last piece of music with the orchestra of the sinking Titanic by relying on the notion of the path that starts with afflictions and finishes free from them. He mentioned again the lack of emphasis put into shamatha nowadays. Moving on, Alan kindly shared with us another sublime passage from Dudjom Lingpa’s Vajra Essence that distinguishes the ground of the coarse mind from rigpa, giving detailed and extremely inspiring descriptions, and clarifying the notion of the path. Then it followed the practice of awareness of awareness (55:02), probing into the agent to ascertain its nature, essential. Finally, we got a very rich question (79:44) about the differences between the Mahamudra terminology and its path and those of Dzogchen. Alan made again a gift to us of it… Please settle your body, speech and mind to listen to these teachings. Enjoy

Alan talks about the up and downs of the practice and how to keep the enthusiasm and where to draw the inspiration from. Then he shares an excerpt from Dudjom Lingpa's The Vajra Essence about the difference between the substrate, the substrate consciousness and rigpa. The practice for today is awareness of awareness (46:53) Alan shares some more stories, and then there's one question (79:44) about Shambhala

Alan goes into greater detail about ascertaining the space of the mind between mental events in settling the mind. He explains the danger of complacency at Stages 4 and 7 and the importance of overcoming remaining faults by sharpening the blade of introspection in order to progress further. Guided meditation on settling the mind in its natural state (36:23) Questions (71:34) Q1) If it takes 2 years to achieve shamatha, how long does it take to achieve vipashyana, trekchö, and thodgyal? Q2) If the Buddha could see all his past lives at enlightenment, why not the first? Q3) In a personal interview, Alan mentioned that grief was a wholesome emotion. How can we learn about the range of wholesome emotions? Q4) If labeling is not part of the shamatha practice and may be counter-productive, how can we know if we’re on track? Note: For a series of free online recordings of Tenzin Palmo on shamatha and the 4 immeasurables, check: http://www.tushita.info/resources/audio-downloads/287-jetsunma-audio