Spring 2011 Shamatha Retreat

This afternoon's teaching is presented by Michelle Seaver, guest teacher and student of Alan Wallace, while Alan is out of town for 24 hours. Alan will return to his regular teaching during the next podcast. Michelle Seaver attended one of the first 100-day shamatha retreats with Alan, continued on in a private 18-month retreat, and is now responsible for bringing mindfulness-based education to the Phuket International Academy School (currently K-8, with plans to be PreK-12).

The guided meditation is on the practice of empathetic joy, the first phase, focusing on the effusion of empathetic joy and gratitude, first for oneself, and then out to others.

The guided meditation begins at 0:38 in the recording.

Michelle then answers this question:

During the mindfulness of breathing practice, I find it easy to maintain a balance of relaxation, stability, and vividness. However, during the practices of settling the mind and awareness of awareness, I find it easy to be distracted and lose by balance. How should I work with this challenge?

This morning's teaching is presented by Michelle Seaver, guest teacher and student of Alan Wallace, while Alan is out of town for 24 hours. Alan will return to his regular teaching schedule Saturday morning. Michelle Seaver attended one of the first 100-day shamatha retreats with Alan, continued on in a private 18-month retreat, and is now responsible for bringing mindfulness-based education to the Phuket International Academy School (currently K-8, with plans to be PreK-12).

The guided meditation is on awareness of awareness, focusing on the process of inverting awareness upon itself and then releasing this awareness into space.

Editor's Note: The first 90 seconds of the guided meditation are missing due to a recording error. During this time, an emphasis was placed on settling the body in its natural state, allowing the breath to be uncontrived and relaxing in this state.

Today's teaching is presented by Michelle Seaver, guest teacher and student of Alan Wallace, while Alan is out of town for 24 hours. Alan will return to his regular teaching schedule Saturday morning. Michelle Seaver attended one of the first 100-day shamatha retreats with Alan, continued on in a private 18-month retreat, and is now responsible for bringing mindfulness-based education to the Phuket International Academy School (currently K-8, with plans to be PreK-12).

The guided meditation is on compassion at the deepest level - the aspiration to be free of suffering caused by grasping.

The meditation begins at 1:00 in the recording.

Following the guided meditation, Michelle and Nick Seaver, her husband and CEO of the Phuket International Academy who also attended one of Alan's first 100-day shamatha retreats and followed it with an 18-month retreat, field these questions from the group:

1. Can you tell us about your experience on a long-term shamatha retreat?

2. About the meditation on awareness of awareness: when trying to focus on awareness, I realize that there is another awareness that is focusing on awareness, so this is no longer awareness. Can you help?

3. What is the mission of the mind centre?

4. Is debate, logic, and thinking included in your mindfulness based program in the school?

We explore the practice that Alan Wallace considers analogous in terms of understanding the mind to the telescope in terms of understanding what is in the heavens. We will focus on the relative dharmadatu, or the domain in which mental events take place, with mental consciousness, working towards refining this consciousness.

Guided meditation begins at 7:50 in the recording.

Alan Wallace guides us in a 24-minute meditation on compassion, furthering this aspiration to recognize a deeper dimension of suffering -- the suffering of change. This type of suffering is brought about by attachment and craving.

The meditation begins at 17:45 in the recording and is followed by a brief, silent meditation.

Alan then speaks freely for a short while and then answers these questions:

1. What are the minimum requirements to teach shamatha?

2. At what point is the secularization of Buddhism skillful and useful?

3. When you say that craving is always a seed of suffering, and I look at my own experience to examine this statement, while it is true often, sometimes it is not true. Can you help explain this?

During this 24-minute guided meditation, Alan guides us in the practice of settling the mind in its natural state, beginning with the space of the body and moving to the space of the mind.

The guided meditation begins at 10:10.

Alan Wallace guides a 24-minute meditation on compassion, asking the question, "How can we be free from suffering?" He teaches the use of a visualization of a radiant orb of light at one's heart, metaphorically representing one's own Buddhanature, into which one draws in one's own or others' suffering, and then observes its incineration in the blazing brilliance of the orb of light.

The guided meditation begins at 19:40.

After the meditation, Alan speaks freely for a while, then answers the following two questions:

1. After hearing your story about the yogi who was totally supported in his pursuit of dharma, despite having no financial resources of his own, I am curious about the circumstances in which students of yours have been able to go into solitary retreat. How does one live a life of solitude in retreat?

2. What is really happening in the practice we did today? Does it have any measurable effect outside of my mind? How do thoughts, feelings, and aspiration differ in their effects?

In this 24-minute guided meditation, Alan Wallace teaches us to view our own minds, including the whole space of the mind and all of the events that arise within that, from the perspective of the substrate consciousness, as opposed to observing the conceptual mind from the perspective of the conceptual mind.

In this 24-minute guided meditation on loving-kindness, Alan Wallace focuses on sending this aspiration spatially, or through space in all directions, beginning with ourselves, and then out to those physically closest to us, and then further and further away.

After the 24-minute meditation, a silent 10-minute meditation is shared by the group.

Alan then answers the following question:

If the substrate mind dissolves into rigpa -- which is non-conceptual -- how is the continuity of consciousness maintained through the bardo, etc., if the continuity is conceptual?

Editor's Note: A brief (2-second) pause occurs in the beginning of the recording, due to a recording disk error.

Alan Wallace guides a 24-minute meditation on mindfulness of breathing, focusing on the balance between increasing vividness and maintaining the stability of the mind, also without the loss of relaxation.