Alan Wallace Live from Phuket! by B. Alan Wallace

05.24.2010

Flying Solo [Silent Practice]

This morning Alan started by saying that he would like to let us choose our own Shamatha method, for these next few days and perhaps for the rest of the retreat. If so, then I will only be podcasting the...

05.22.2010

Loving Kindness: "Coming back to the Beginning for the First Time"

This lovely afternoon we went back to the practice of Loving Kindness, using the phrase from T.S. Elliot in the title. We went straight into meditation. After the practice, we had assorted Q&A from several people, on many topics. Alan talked...

05.20.2010

Equanimity: Striking a balance between fluidity and structure

This afternoon Alan starts by quite briefly explaining this balance between fluidity and structure in the equanimity practice, and after the instructions we set off in a pretty much rich but silent session. After the session Alan had two juicy pieces...

05.20.2010

Awareness of Awareness: Warming up for the long run

This morning we return to the third phase in the classic Awareness of Awareness teachings of Padmasambhava. In the introduction, Alan explains how this phase helps create a very 3D and spacious quality to our awareness, which is a very...

05.19.2010

Empathetic Joy (Silent Meditation), Q&A

This afternoon the meditation was 100% silent. Even the introduction lasts around 20 seconds! I cut out the 24 minutes of silence in order to make this a smaller download. You can click pause and do your own Empathetic Joy meditation!...

05.19.2010

Awareness of Awareness: Deconstructing the artificial problem of mind and matter by going down to the root from which both emerge

Today's practice, the second out of the four Awareness of Awareness methods that we cover in our cycle, is a very deep penetrating practice, encroaching upon VIpassyana territory. Alan starts with an introduction on the practice and its implications, relating...

05.18.2010

Empathetic Joy: Balancing some of the possible side effects of so much Shamatha practice!

Alan starts this afternoon by detailing some of the possible "side effects" that could happen during intense practice of Shamatha, in the sense that when we are trying to make our mind so focused an unified, it can sometimes become...

05.18.2010

Awareness of Awareness: Understanding the Nature of Consciousness (Going against the Dogma!)

This morning Alan promptly warned us that he was feeling a little bit feisty, which resulted in a great historical introduction with examples of how subjective experience has been mistreated and eventually completely disregarded by scientists and philosophers. It includes...

05.17.2010

Combining Compassion and Loving Kindness: An Enriched Tonglen

Today as the title suggests we combined Compassion and Loving kindness into a practice of Tonglen. Furthermore, we incorporated the four modes of enlightened acvitity, using each one where needed, and in the visualization we let the light or energy...

05.17.2010

Settling the Mind in its Natural State: Allowing the mind to heal itself

In this morning's introduction, Alan talks about how the mind is very capable of healing itself, and how the purpose of settling the mind in its natural state is to observe it vividly while not doing things that will prevent...

05.16.2010

[Bonus] Follow-up Clearing up a few points and a profoundly encouraging ending

This is a short followup (I promise! It’s actually less than 15 minutes) clearing up some points from the previous episode. I took two fragments from the next day and mashed them together for this podcast. It is absolutely necessary...

05.16.2010

[Bonus] The nature of information, mind and matter, human existence as a flow of experience/information, quantum cosmology, etc.

Ok, this is what a lot of you have been waiting for, and with very good reason! Get your thinking hats on, turn off your phones, get a nice cup of tea, clear your schedule, and bring forth your scientific...

05.16.2010

[Bonus] The Four Immeasurables

In this request by Nick W, Alan breaks down the Four Immeasurables in an extremely clear synopsis of how they interrelate, their faux facsimiles (which may look very similar but they work in the opposite direction), and how to clearly...

05.15.2010

Compassion: Freedom from the three levels of suffering

Today we came back to the meditative cultivation of Compassion (to use the correct phrase) and had an introduction directly related to the practice in order to have less words interjected afterwards. The introduction also talks about the three levels...

05.15.2010

Settling the Mind in its Natural State: Sharpening the Vividness

Today we practiced settling the mind in its natural state with an emphasis on observing the background, the "stage" of the mind. As Alan mentions, this acts as a whetstone (knife-sharpening stone) for our vividness, increasing the resolution and sharpness...

05.14.2010

Compassion: Separating the Mental Affliction from the Person

Alan gives an introduction on what we actually meditate on when "meditating on the 4I." That is to say, the object of the meditations is always sentient beings. In today's powerful practice, we work on separating the person from the...

05.14.2010

Settling the Mind in its Natural State: Coming into our HQ and releasing control

This morning's introduction was about our sense of control and possession of our bodies, our minds, and "our" thoughts. We often believe that our thoughts are actually ours, when we can't even control them. In the following meditation, we go into...

05.13.2010

Compassion: Blowing the Dust of our Eyes

Today we had a very deep practice on Compassion. The introduction contains great examples as always in order to turn our minds towards the cultivation of compassion, to make real the suffering of others and to unveil our innate compassion,...

05.13.2010

Settling the Mind in its Natural State: Coming in From the Senses

This morning we practiced Settling the Mind by coming in through the senses with the phrase "In the perceived, let there be only the perceived" as a preparation for observing the mind. After a short introduction on the practice in...

05.12.2010

Loving Kindness: Breaking down the Barriers

In this episode, we keep working more deeply with the Four Immeasurables. As always we have our introduction which includes an answer by HH. Dalai Lama from a Mind and Life conference saying that what moves us or motivates us...

05.12.2010

Breath Awareness: Getting in the flow

This morning we had a brief followup on the concept of the loss of the sense of self. Afterwards we went directly into the practice, which you may notice was quite silent apart from the initial sets of instructions. This...

05.11.2010

[Bonus] The Preliminary Practices [Short Episode]

Ah, the Ngöndro (preliminary) practices. If you ask how many you have to do (without the proper context and preparation), you will probably be sorry to hear the answer: 100,000. Of ALL OF THEM. With these good-humored words and other...

05.11.2010

[Bonus] Clearing up misconceptions about the “Non-Self.”

This podcast was spurred by a question from our philosopher Ilse asking about the difference of "Identitylessness" [or non self] and "Personhood" (as she put it). There are many misconceptions about Buddhism and the theme of the "Non-Self," and here B....

05.11.2010

Loving Kindness: Ready to Launch

In the introduction, Alan talks about Loving Kindness and how it is an aspiration and not a feeling (although it certainly comes with a feeling). He also talks about achieving Shamatha by method of non-discursive meditation on the apspiration of...

05.11.2010

Mindfulness of Breathing: Focus on the Abdomen

Today we had a quite silent and relaxing session on the sensations of the breath at the level of the abdomen. The introduction talks about the several ways in which we can recognize progress in our practice, and the outro is...

05.10.2010

Loving Kindness: Turning Possibility into Actuality / Shaping our own Future

Today we re-started the 4I cycle with Loving Kindness. Specifically, we focused on motivation and how it has the power to make things possible or impossible, achievable or not achievable. The introduction was around this motivation and its power, while the...

05.10.2010

Full Body Awareness: The Importance of Relaxation (and a reflection on anxiety its status quo in modern society)

This session was the first of the meditations with less spoken guidance. However, Alan made up for it with the great introduction and outro! The talks are based on the importance of looking for genuine happiness, focusing on the more and...

05.09.2010

[Bonus] Discussion on Kickstarting the Mind Sciences Revolution through Paranormal Abilities

In this juicy sunday Bonus, Alan answers a question from our friend Noah about why wait to kickstart the revolution in the mind sciences? Why not get an accomplished Yogi to demonstrate his paranormal abilities under scientific scrutiny? Maybe just...

05.08.2010

Equanimity: Bringing in the Sharp Wisdom (And a great juicy question on the 4I)

Wow, I have to say that we ended this cycle of meditations perfectly. We had a very valuable practice (although, what practice has not been very valuable?) on Equanimity paired with wisdom. We started with a short and sweet introduction,...

05.08.2010

[Video] Podcast Fix: Missing Episodes!

Hello everyone! Last week we had some internet trouble over here which caused the podcast XML to get corrupted. As a result, I have received many comments saying that you were having trouble downloading the podcast episodes from: April 28 - May...

05.08.2010

Awareness of Awareness: Resting in the Sheer Luminosity and Cognizance of Experience

This morning we practiced the final phase of Awareness of Awareness, and quoting from Alan's great analogy in the introduction to this practice: "Putting it in the Oven." The title comes from the succinct explanation of the practice as described...

05.07.2010

Equanimity: Focus on Impermanence

This podcast starts with a microphone test; you may notice that this podcast has none of the annoying popping noises that went out in the previous episodes. And the sound quality will keep getting better as we tweak the system. Ok,...

05.07.2010

Awareness of Awareness: Approximating the Shamatha-Achieved Mind

This morning we had a practice of the third method of Awareness of Awareness. Alan starts with an introduction and explains some points on the practice, and after the practice he gives some tips on keeping a constant meditation even...

05.06.2010

Empathetic Joy: Taking delight in being of benefit and in contemplative cultivation

Today's practice was focused on taking delight both towards being of benefit in the world outwards but also of going into meditation and being apparently useless for a while, because it's a cultivation with which you can become immensely useful...

05.06.2010

Awareness of Awareness: On the edge of Vipassana

This morning we followed a second method of Shamatha without a Sign (Awareness of Awareness) as taught by Padmasambhava. This method included probing into the very nature of that which inverts and releases the attention and in so doing one...

05.05.2010

Empathetic Joy: How to repay the kindness of others by freeing ourselves of our own mental afflictions.

This afternoon was great. We started with an overview of four immeasurables as an extrordinarly wise system of emotional regulation, and although that sounds utilitarian (since the qualities of loving kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity are some of the...

05.05.2010

Back to Awareness of Awareness

This morning we started with a brief recap on some details about the breath in Settling the Mind in its Natural State, and some notes about the substrate conciousness and Awareness of Awareness. Afterwards we had a very clearly explained practice,...

05.04.2010

Compassion: Lucidity in the Waking State

We start with an introduction on the three different dimensions of suffering and pick up briefly on this morning's topic of becoming lucid in the waking state. The deep practice that follows is indeed a Compassion practice but its focus is...

05.04.2010

Settling the Mind in its Natural State: Observing the Nature of the Space of the Mind

This morning we had an inspiring introduction regarding the space of the mind and its observation, as well as a sequence of steps to become lucid with respect to reality. We went into a 24 minute session focusing on the...

05.03.2010

Compassion: Going into Deep Waters

Alan starts with an introduction on "episodic compassion" and how easy it can be to feel contempt and superiority towards the people committing injustices according to us without looking at all of the perspectives. This practice of compassion focuses both...

05.03.2010

Settling the Mind in its Natural State: Seeing and Hearing without using the Brain

Interesting title eh? This morning we practiced Settling the Mind in its Natural State. Alan gave a brief introduction on some cases of Out of Body Experiences and showed how they are related to this practice and to Shamatha in general....

05.02.2010

[Video] A Message From Alan: Join the Mailing List!

No, it’s not a side effect of your intense daily meditation -- in this podcast the picture actually moves! That is to say, it’s a video! With the help of David Cherniack, we were able to record Alan’s quick message. As...

05.02.2010

[Bonus] Alan’s Ideal (and possible) Vision of Buddhism and Contemplative Science in the next 10-15 years

In this bonus podcast, B. Alan Wallace is asked about his ideal vision of Buddhism and Contemplative Science in "The West" (or modernity) for the next 10-15 years. Alan first describes his own term, "Contemplative Science," and then gets going...

05.01.2010

Compassion: Focusing on the Underlying Causes (and one more superb example for the Mind/Brain talk from yesterday!)

We start with a very precise introduction of how mental afflictions are afflictions because they are rooted in delusion. Some feelings can be either very positive or afflictive depending on the above. I won't give examples in order to not...

05.01.2010

Settling the Mind in its Natural State: Self-Knowing and Observing the Mind Heal Itself

This morning we had a short but sweet introduction on the mind’s capacity to heal itself and how the traditional sciences can cooperate with the contemplative science, come together, and share their insights. Alan also talks about how sometimes support...

04.30.2010

[Bonus] Explaining Mind and Brain: The mind exists, and it is something different than the brain.

In this podcast, B. Alan Wallace, Ph. D., answers a question involving having a friendly discussion about the relationship between mind and brain (don't we all have those with our friends all the time?) and explains his point of view...

04.30.2010

Compassion: Arousing the Heart (And a strong reflection on modern Dharma practice)

Tonight we had a 5 minute introduction to the practice of Compassion and how to do it properly, as well as a reflection on the effect of Tonglen. Afterwards we go straight to the practice. After the meditation there is a...

04.30.2010

Settling the Mind in its Natural State (setting the stage for a great discussion of modern scientific materialism and the mind)

Today got quite long for a morning practice, but it was very interesting! Alan immediately got going with a very sharp discussion of the current status of acceptance that cognitive sciences or even just attentional training such as Shamatha have...

04.29.2010

Loving Kindness: Breaking Our Self-Centeredness

We start with a few comments about the term "Loving Kindness" and definitions of love (neodarwinism, scientific materialism, freud, all the goodies) and the shortcomings of looking at human beings as simple animals from the metaphysical point of view. Then...

04.29.2010

Breath Awareness: “Classic” Practice

This morning we had a 4 minuteintroduction on achieving Shamatha with breath awareness (and the acquired sign), followed by a classic, old school practice as taught by Buddhaghosa and practiced for millenia. This practice should be at the bottom of...

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Alan Wallace Live from Phuket! episodes:

Flying Solo [Silent Practice]

Loving Kindness: "Coming back to the Beginning for the First Time"

Equanimity: Striking a balance between fluidity and structure

Awareness of Awareness: Warming up for the long run

Empathetic Joy (Silent Meditation), Q&A

Awareness of Awareness: Deconstructing the artificial problem of mind and matter by going down to the root from which both emerge

Empathetic Joy: Balancing some of the possible side effects of so much Shamatha practice!

Awareness of Awareness: Understanding the Nature of Consciousness (Going against the Dogma!)

Combining Compassion and Loving Kindness: An Enriched Tonglen

Settling the Mind in its Natural State: Allowing the mind to heal itself

[Bonus] *Follow-up* Clearing up a few points and a profoundly encouraging ending

[Bonus] The nature of information, mind and matter, human existence as a flow of experience/information, quantum cosmology, etc.

[Bonus] The Four Immeasurables

Compassion: Freedom from the three levels of suffering

Settling the Mind in its Natural State: Sharpening the Vividness

Compassion: Separating the Mental Affliction from the Person

Settling the Mind in its Natural State: Coming into our HQ and releasing control

Compassion: Blowing the Dust of our Eyes

Settling the Mind in its Natural State: Coming in From the Senses

Loving Kindness: Breaking down the Barriers

Breath Awareness: Getting in the flow

[Bonus] The Preliminary Practices [Short Episode]

[Bonus] Clearing up misconceptions about the “Non-Self.”

Loving Kindness: Ready to Launch

Mindfulness of Breathing: Focus on the Abdomen

Loving Kindness: Turning Possibility into Actuality / Shaping our own Future

Full Body Awareness: The Importance of Relaxation (and a reflection on anxiety its status quo in modern society)

[Bonus] Discussion on Kickstarting the Mind Sciences Revolution through Paranormal Abilities

Equanimity: Bringing in the Sharp Wisdom (And a great juicy question on the 4I)

[Video] Podcast Fix: Missing Episodes!

Awareness of Awareness: Resting in the Sheer Luminosity and Cognizance of Experience

Equanimity: Focus on Impermanence

Awareness of Awareness: Approximating the Shamatha-Achieved Mind

Empathetic Joy: Taking delight in being of benefit and in contemplative cultivation

Awareness of Awareness: On the edge of Vipassana

Empathetic Joy: How to repay the kindness of others by freeing ourselves of our own mental afflictions.

Back to Awareness of Awareness

Compassion: Lucidity in the Waking State

Settling the Mind in its Natural State: Observing the Nature of the Space of the Mind

Compassion: Going into Deep Waters

Settling the Mind in its Natural State: Seeing and Hearing without using the Brain

[Video] A Message From Alan: Join the Mailing List!

[Bonus] Alan’s Ideal (and possible) Vision of Buddhism and Contemplative Science in the next 10-15 years

Compassion: Focusing on the Underlying Causes (and one more superb example for the Mind/Brain talk from yesterday!)

Settling the Mind in its Natural State: Self-Knowing and Observing the Mind Heal Itself

[Bonus] Explaining Mind and Brain: The mind exists, and it is something different than the brain.

Compassion: Arousing the Heart (And a strong reflection on modern Dharma practice)

Settling the Mind in its Natural State (setting the stage for a great discussion of modern scientific materialism and the mind)

Loving Kindness: Breaking Our Self-Centeredness

Breath Awareness: “Classic” Practice

[Bonus] Follow-up Clearing up a few points and a profoundly encouraging ending