Fall 2011 Shamatha Retreat

Back to Compassion focusing on suffering of change because of the mental affliction of attachment. The internal antidote is samadhi. Alan relates a true story of a hyena and a lion which perfectly illustrates why we should have compassion even for those who apparently have a great life hedonically. In the meditation session we start with ourselves.

Meditation starts at 17:10

Alan begins by giving examples of how one could experience the substrate directly before achieving shamatha. As with emptiness and rigpa, such direct experiences of the substrate are veiled by concepts. As such, the first quality of the substrate to strive for is non-conceptuality. Reminder: the core practice is to attend to mental phenomena without distraction, without grasping.

Guided meditation (17:55) starting with focusing one’s attention on the visual, the auditory, and the tactile before moving on to the mental.

Alan explains the meaning behind snapping his fingers before sitting down.

Questions (43:07):

Q1) At what stage can vipashyana be integrated with shamatha?

Q2) At advanced stages of shamatha, breathing gets less frequent, stopping for periods at a time. What are the 4 immeasurables good for then?

Q3) Developing buddhanature according to dzogchen.

Q4) What’s the difference between buddhist teachings and buddhism in the highest levels of shamatha?

Q5) Can we experience the substrate consciousness in various states like sleep?

Q6) What is resistance to samadhi that one encounters through stage 5?

Q7) Is the clear light of death the same as rigpa?

Q8) Please elaborate on the term appearances in the expression „taking appearances and awareness as the path“

Q9) What are some physiological reasons for keeping the eyes open during meditation?

The most obvious form of suffering is blatant suffering, which is both physical and mental. Physical suffering involves lack of necessities such as food, clothing, shelter, health, while mental suffering is such that people can be in wonderfully endowed in all the necessities but suffer terribly mentally. The black plague of mental suffering is carried on the fleas of mental concepts - suffering encroaches via concepts. With mindfulness of breathing, one blows concepts and thoughts away with the out-breath and the stages of shamatha involve the progressive diminishing of this conceptual realm. Achieving bodhicitta is a second way of achieving liberation. By cherishing others more than yourself, this too leads to the cessation of mental suffering.

Meditation starts at 14:10

“When did the Buddha stop teaching?” Alan launches into a wide ranging discussion loosely revolving around shamatha but focusing upon the authenticity and reliability of the teachings of different Buddhist traditions. After the meditation (48:40) focusing on the sensations at the apertures of the nostrils, he then deals with questions (73:29) about differences between Buddha Nature and the substrate consciousness, their location, how one rests in each and the uniqueness of the Vajrayana method of realization in general. He also refers to some writings dealing with the 5 factors of stabilization and 5 obscurations.

Alan leads a meditation in which one utilizes one’s own experience of loving kindness from a person who embodies such qualities as a means to develop greater loving kindness in oneself. He notes that our limitations in being loving come substantially from the limitations we impose and accept upon ourselves.

Meditation starts at 8:07

Afternoon talk

Mindfulness of breathing. Cultivating stability of attention while focusing on the rise and fall of the abdomen. Maintaining the same sense of relaxation. Breathe in to arise wakefulness and eliminate dullness. Breathe out to release all distractions. Discussion of counting technique with breathing. One thing you bring to the practice is your substrate consciousness with its stillness. Clarity is an intrinsic quality that gets covered over but not eliminated. Importance of releasing grasping.

Meditation starts at 30:43

Questions (55:55)

How do you know when medium and subtle excitation are occurring in the settling the mind in its natural state meditation? How about medium and subtle laxity?

Is it true that merely attaining shamatha, the body remains fresh after death? What level of realization is needed to be liberated in the bardo of the Dharmata?

Why do we need to be in solitary retreat to attain shamatha?

Question regarding free will and the self. How does rigpa impact the coarse mind and does it influence free will? Are there parallels in Christianity?

Morning talk

Four immeasurables – Loving Kindness. Why can’t all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness? In the Tibetan prayer it is posed as a rhetorical question because the answer it that they can because the causes of happiness are within each sentient being.

Meditation (8:47)

Meditate on the causes of happiness and the wish that all sentient beings develop these causes. Includes visualization of specific individuals and sending this wish to them in the form of light.

Alan mentions that he inverted the teachings. The Loving Kindness Immeasurable was given during the morning session. However, the teachings are complementary.

Teaching:

What is your vision of happiness? How much do you really need? After several weeks of intense practice, people might be re-evaluating their priorities. There is a possibility of dissolving the mind into the substrate.

Perhaps you see that you might need long-term retreat of a year or more. But is it worth the risk of two years of practicing? Is it a good investment? What if you don’t achieve shamatha? You have to have your motivation rooted in reality: see how the cultivation of attention contributes to the causes of sanity. You want to live longer so that you can practice dharma more.

Long-term retreat has to be at the right time. You cannot just ditch young children for two years. If you find the timing is right, you have to ask “What do I bring to the practice?” For this two-month retreat we have the right conditions for basic training: a good environment with most of our needs met and few distractions.

In shamatha, continuity is the key. You can’t get fire by rubbing sticks together for a few seconds or minutes until you get bored or tired. You have to keep up the friction.

The prerequisites for long-term retreat:

1. Contentment: if you can’t sit and do nothing, you’re not ready for it

2. Few desires: you have to have a radical shift from seeking hedonic pleasure to seeing genuine happiness. For many people, #1 and #2 are deal makers or deal breakers.

3. Ethics: don’t do anything with your body, speech or mind that imbalances your practice or anyone else’s practice. What is the impact of our behavior? (i.e. Don’t throw sand into your car’s gearbox).

4. You must have very few activities and concerns. You have to reboot your life, do a forced shut-down from your old lifestyle. It’s hard.

5. During and between sessions, get rid of all obsessive, compulsive thoughts.

Meditation (33:30) on settling the body, speech, and mind in the natural state. Do not shortchange this process: Mindfulness of breathing.

Q&A (58:54)

1. Discussion of nyam (transient experience – physical or psychological – that is an anomaly and is the result of correct practice) Prana, the subtle energy, is being activated. You are getting an extreme makeover.

2. Discussion of taking refuge. Dharma is the most important. As for a teacher, you want a “genuine happiness doctor/dentist” who can pull the “unwisdom teeth” of hostility, craving, and delusion. Your teacher should know more than you about the path. His/her motivation is altruistic/to be of service/from compassion. You should feel you are getting benefit. Being accomplished, or at least a lineage holder, is important.

We have begun to see the promise and the obstacles - our minds bare and naked. We have seen some glimmerings of our potential. In the vajrayana path we can take the fruit as the path. Go where you have never been before and invite this into the present actuality through imagination.

We are at an important moment in history - a lot changing and going and being destroyed. A lot of possibility will be dharma to have a little bit of this and a little bit of that. But few teachers can show a full path to liberation - not many out there who know the real path.

There is no way to peace, peace is the way.

There is no way to freedom, freedom is the way.

We come back to the practice of loving kindness focused on one self, again posing these four questions:

1) What would make you truly happy, and provide you with a sense of fulfillment, the realization of your innermost heart's desire?

2) In order to find the fulfillment that you seek, what would you love to receive from the world around you; hedonically, which of course is very important; and what would you love to receive from others in order to find genuine happiness at its perfection?

3) In order to realize your heart's desire, from what qualities would you love to be free, with what qualities would you love to be endowed, how would you love to transform and mature, evolve, so that you can become the person you'd love to become?

4) What would you love to offer to the world around you, to those near and far, over the short and the long term, what is the greatest good you can offer?

Alan also shares his own vision of this, comprised mainly of: following the path to true awakening, and helping other people to do so.

Meditation starts at 8:14

Note: No, we didn't skip a session :) Alan has decided to switch the format so we're now having the 4 immeasurables in the morning and shamatha in the afternoon. He talks more about this in the next episode, so stay tuned!

As riding a dolphin… Today, as the last session of a 10 day cycle on Shamatha and the 4

Immeasurables, the session was about equanimity conjoined with tonglen. Before jumping

into it, Alan touched the topic of how mindfulness of breathing, once the breath is settled in

its natural rhythm, can never be boring because the cause itself of boredom is removed with

this practice, and it becomes like riding a dolphin.

Next, he explained how these three methods to achieve shamatha help or can provide

depth for the cultivation of equanimity, going to the substrate and from that perspective

carry on with this discursive meditation (36:14).

Finally, we had three detailed questions (61:05): one about the measure of releasing during each

out-breath when settling the respiration in its natural state; second one was about until

which point does the practice of settling the mind in its natural state purify unwholesome

deeds, and if it might be needed additional purification practices; the third one was about

the Buddhist approach with respect to free will and determinism. We were delighted with

extremely interesting answers that went beyond the questions themselves.

Please don’t miss this podcast. Enjoy