Spring 2011 Shamatha Retreat

In this session, Alan Wallace guides a meditation on mudita, or empathetic joy. He first speaks for some time about the opportunity of a precious human birth, and the power contemplating this opportunity has to shift the mind towards gratitude and delight.

The guided meditation begins at 21:55 in the recording.

Alan then answers these questions from the group:

1. When we are practicing settling the mind in its natural state, thoughts always come. Do them come from the substrate consciousness or the space of the mind?

and

In awareness of awareness, is this awareness from rigpa or substrate?

2. Is awareness of awareness equivalent to the skandha of consciousness?

Is it essentially rigpa?

If so, do other phenomena manifest rigpa differently?

Is that which concentrates equivalent to or associated with volition?

3. In awareness of awareness, I find it difficult to divorce the physical from what I'm doing. When releasing, I feel my body relaxing, and then when withdrawing, I feel my body tensing up. I don't know how to separate from these physical feelings.

We again begin to explore the practice of awareness of awareness in this teaching and guided meditation with Alan Wallace. He speaks for a short while before the guided meditation about the significance of this practice.

The guided meditation begins at 13:50 in the recording.

In this teaching, Alan Wallace guides a meditation on compassion for the deepest kind of suffering: the suffering of conditioned existence. He informs us that the cultivation of wisdom from insight is a prerequisite for this compassion; the sense that it is possible to wake up, to realize true freedom.

The guided meditation begins 29:08 at in the recording.

Editor's Note: The first three minutes of this session may be difficult for some to hear due to a recording error.

Alan then answers these questions:

1. When in awareness of awareness, we withdraw from all appearances and objectifications of our mind dissolve into the substrate consciousness. But only achieving shamatha, at the end of the shamatha trek, our mind has dissolved into a more essential and less configured consciousness. Can you please be more specific about the different "stages of dissolution" along this trek to destination?

2. In this morning's meditation, we were instructed to observe the space of the mind and the objects that arise in it without alteration. I know that quantum physics has discovered that inherent in observation itself is a changing of the observed, and some scientists today are questioning the scientific method itself, wondering if we do not alter experiments by observation. If this is true, is it really possible to observer ourselves without alteration?

We continue to practice setting the mind in its natural state, today focusing on observing the space of the mind without alteration.

The guided meditation begins at 9:20 in the recording.

Today's session begins with an inspiring and lucid twenty-minute dharma talk about the four noble truths, particularly the first three noble truths. This is followed by a guided meditation on the immeasurable of compassion, focusing on the suffering of change because of attachment to the way things are or are not.

The guided meditation begins at 21:45 in the recording.

Alan then answers these questions from the group:

1. In "The Attention Revolution" in chapter 7, you talk about, when settling the mind, looking at craving, hostility and delusion, and being able to see the bliss, luminosity, and non-conceptuality underlying those things. I don't know how to do that.

2. How should I use a dream journal when I'm waking up throughout the night and remembering dreams - as well as in the morning when I am supposed to keep still and relax back into the dream?

3. In your teachings, you often cite your source for a particular idea or practice. In the book "Destructive Emotions" by Daniel Goleman, Goleman says in the introduction that you attended a retreat with S. N. Goenka, which inspired your devotion to practice. Can you tell us about the sources of Goenka's teachings? Is it based on the four applications of mindfulness? Is it a shamatha practice?

Alan Wallace guides a 24-minute guided meditation on settling the mind in its natural state. He first introduces the practice of applying this quality of awareness to our experiences engaging with others.

The guided meditation begins at 14:17 in the recording.

Alan Wallace begins today's teaching with a 40-minute dharma talk that could be titled, "Retreat and Expedition Approaches to Freedom from Blatant Suffering." In this engaging talk, Alan surveys the history of these approaches and explores the mechanisms and effects of shamatha and vipassana.

He then guides a meditation on compassion, first wishing ourselves freedom from blatant suffering, then on to others, working both spatially and allowing others to simply appear, "invite themselves in," to our meditation.

The guided meditation begins at 41:00 in the recording.

He answers two questions from the group, the first of which refers to the notes available on the Santa Barbara Institute's website at http://sbinstitute.com/PodcastNotes/PodcastNotes.html and is titled "Three New Methods."

1. Could you explain the following excerpt from Buddhaghosa's commentary on Sati, especially the underlined parts.

"Its characteristic is not floating; its property is not losing; its manifestation is guarding or the state of being face to face with an object; its basis is strong noting or the close applications of mindfulness of the body and so on. It should be seen as like a post due to its state of being set in the object, and as like a gatekeeper because it guards the gate of the eye and so on."

2. What do you mean (in Chapter 4 of Attention Revolution) by saying that, "[Through the achievement or the power of mindfulness at stage 4] the practice comes into its own." Could you use a synonym for that?

We return to the practice of settling the mind in its natural state. In the guided meditation, we bring the quality of quiet, bare attention to the visual, auditory, tactile, and then the mental field. In each domain, we allow there to be the simplicity of "in the heard, let there be just the heard" and so on.

The guided meditation begins at 7:45 in the recording.

After the guided meditation, Alan speaks freely for a while, encouraging us not to grasp onto anything which is not in our control. He also speaks about the process of gaining mastery over one's own rigpa.

This simple approach to loving-kindness was taught by the Buddha himself. We will be extending the awareness out spatially in all directions -- without bounds -- but first requesting that we be free of animosity (the distant enemy of loving-kindness).

Alan tells us about how Matthieu Ricard once said, in the context of compassion practice (but the statement is analogous to loving-kindness practice) that one way you know the practice is working, that it's been more than an intellectual exercise, is that if you find, as a result of your meditation, when your meditation comes to a close and you venture out, engaging with other sentient beings, you're actually poised to serve the needs of others, to alleviate someone's distress, if that's a possibility.

The guided meditation begins at 13:34 in the recording.

Alan then answers these questions from the group:

1. What is the acquired sign?

2. Why, when you're meditating so quietly, does the breath become so subtle?

3. I'm eating less to lose weight, but I feel I can't meditate as well with less food. Why?

4. What do you think about the Amitabha Pure Land, and how does it relate to Dzog Chen?

5. You said that one can achieve shamatha by single-pointed concentration on loving-kindness. What is the extra benefit of achieving shamatha in this way?

and

How do you know when you're ready to achieve shamatha?

6. You spoke yesterday about the effervesce of the space of awareness that one notices when examining the space of the mind. Do you get this in awareness of awareness also?

Alan Wallace guides in the third phase of mindfulness of breathing, which focuses on enhancing vividness without sacrificing stability. During this meditation, we place our awareness on the sensation of breath at the aperture of the nostrils. Alan reminds us that relaxation remains essential and to maintain a relaxed body, especially the facial muscles, during this practice.

The guided meditation begins at 5:08 in the recording.