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 a recap on the terms "mindfulness," "instrospection," and "conscientiousness."This local photo is courtesy of Daniela.

Mindfulness of Breathing: Focus on the Abdomen

Welcome! This is now an archive page for Dr. Alan Wallace’s teachings from the Spring 2010 Shamatha Retreat in the wonderful Phuket International Academy Mind Centre!

This podcast feed was 100% created and updated by us (his students here in Phuket) so we can share Alan’s diamond-sharp teachings! 

This podcast was created live every day during the retreat in 2010. We will still maintain this site because the teachings are timeless. For more information, please contact the great people at info@sbinstitute.com !

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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 long afternoon sessions.But for now I left this one in anyway.Alan also talks about the "gears" of our practice, upshifting and downshifting, and gives a brief outro on the importance of remaining engaged with reality.Enjoy this silent practice with us!This great photo is by Sara.

Flying Solo [Silent Practice]

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 about "practicing well" regardless of how well the practice is going, and there are other pieces of golden information scattered throughout. I would also like to let you know that after receiving several emails offering donations, I added some links to donate to the Santa Barbara Institute for Conciousness Studies to help fund future podcasts. For those viewing this on the web click on the big arrow to see the subsite, and for those viewing this in iTunes go here: http://bit.ly/bnxSR5All of the profits will go to ensure that they can keep running podcasts in the future when I am not around. So don't worry, I don't want to make any money from you (and neither do they!)This picture of the surrounding jungle was provided by Sangay!

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

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 of paper with multi-questions written on them. They cover a lot of practical content, such as the characteristics of the Shamatha stages and how to use them correctly, the characteristics of the different types of exitation and laxity. how to maintain motivation in the practice (dealing with the issue of "progress"), how to be really 100% sure that you are doing "Settling the Mind..[]" correctly, and more. The next question deals with conceptual designation, and starts with "how were atoms first conceptually designated" and later turns into an analysis of conceptual designation, appearances, and how we can never actually see the referent of appearances (so yes in a way we never see the "real" world, just appearances that arise from our substrate). The talk was filled with physics, history, several jokes, open questions, laughter... Alan really had us cracking up today. However, (as always) he managed to leave us dazed with brilliant insight, so that we all walk out of the meditation hall absorbed in thoughts and bumping into things (ok maybe not the latter).Enjoy as we did!The picture is very much related as we approach the celebrations for the Birth of the Buddha (in several East-Asian countries such as Thailand).

Equanimity: Striking a balance between fluidity and structure

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 good warmup before settling in in tomorrow's practice. Alan clearly explains the practice with his characteristic eloquence and then we dive right in.Following the practice, Alan spices it up with a little bit of cosmology for good measure, relating the practice to a microcosm of how the universe may be operating, and giving a great analogy of breaking through to pristine awareness (rigpa). And today's sky photo was taken by me a few days ago... I hope I hadn't used it before! Duplicates will probably happen.

Awareness of Awareness: Warming up for the long run

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! For reference, go to the previous podcasts. After the meditation we had a power outage which cut out a chunk of a very interesting question. The power came on and off a few times, and I cut the long parts when the power was out (and thus we had no recording). Among the questions covered in this podcast are: Not fusing mental events with the referent (Alan gave a VERY clear answer, very useful for those practicing Settling the Mind[ ]...), some clarification about the acquired sign in Breath Awareness (and more on this air-element symbol), and then a long question about many aspects of Shamatha, both practical, historic, and theoric, and finally from that question arose Alan's description of his proposal: A Buddhism Renaissance, coming back to the core teachings and not simply "riding the wave" of tradition and losing touch with the true wisdom.

Mindfulness of Breathing: Focus on the Abdomen

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