Fall 2011 Shamatha Retreat

“Shape your mind, shape your life.” Having completed the cycle of guided meditation, Alan speaks briefly about envisioning the transition from retreat into daily life, and in particular the difference between “aspiration” and “hope and fear”.

Silent meditation starts at 8:11

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.

Meditation on equanimity. Start with loving kindness for ourselves. Mental afflictions come to us just like the flu – don’t fuse your identity with the mental afflictions. The more loving kindness you have for yourself, the more you can extend it to others.

Meditation (16:23)

Can do usual Tonglen practice. Can also visualize receiving blessings from your teachers and all the Buddhas in the form of light coming in to you and then breathe it out to others.

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.

We come back to equanimity and Alan talks about it from 3 different levels:

Coarse mind - Shantideva: "If there is something you can do about it don't worry. If there's nothing you can do about it, don't worry"

Subtle mind - Everything arises as a manifestation of our own karma. "I will paint from my own mind. All I'm seeing/experiencing are appearances from my coarse mind" Consider what you've contributed but don't respond with craving or hostility.

Rigpa - Everything is an expression of the Buddha Mind. An all-pervasive display of compassion

Meditation starts at 10:47

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

Instruction and meditation on cultivating Empathetic Joy:

Calling upon the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and gurus for blessing and remembering that they are not outside of ourselves but within us.

Meditation starts at 11:26

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

Why couldn't we all never be parted from genuine happiness free from suffering? Cultivating Empathetic Joy is not just an emotion but also an aspiration. When we take on the personal commitment, "May I make it so" we go from immeasurable Empathetic Joy to great Empathetic Joy. We place a marker in the future for this commitment that we can't fulfill right now. Alan calls the Four Immeasurables the heartbeat of Bodhicitta - the four great steads that pull the Mahayana chariot with wisdom as the charioteer.

Meditation starts at 11:34

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