Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast Fall 2014 Shamatha, Vipashyana, Dream Yoga

As a bonus, at the end of our retreat Alan presented to us the teachings on Sukhavati from Karma Chagme. If you missed your chance for the three modes of achieving enlightenment, then it is definitely not Alan’s fault, with all the podcasts up to now you guys had your opportunities. If not, don’t start crying yet, there is still the light of hope on the Western horizon, and that’s Amitabha’s pure land. There are different levels of pure lands that can be reached by beings, depending on their abilities. If you have already achieved a high level of realization you have full choice. Would you like to be in Akanishta or is it not challenging enough for you to go there? Well, most of us might want to start trying with Sukhavati first, that is more within reach of ordinary beings who are still prone to mental afflictions. What could prevent you from going there are the five deeds of immediate retribution. But other than that, the entrance examination is comparatively easy. Once you have achieved rebirth in Sukhavati you are all set. You can achieve enlightenment either there or in any other pure realm of your choice, Alan’s favorite will be Shambala. I am sure that he will establish the tradition of the 8-week retreats there, so make sure you will be able to join!

What better way to end a retreat than with Shantideva’s beautiful verses about embracing bodhicitta! The verses cited today are often used for the liturgy when taking the bodhisattva precepts. Shantideva’s verses are not meant as a teaching to an audience, they are more like an invitation for us in the sense of the “Ehipassiko”, the “Come and see” of the Pali canon, and Shantideva invites us into his own mind with them. When you take the Pratimoksha or the Tantric precepts, you need to receive them through a certain lineage. The guru is the channel through which you receive the blessings and the guidance of the Dharmakaya when taking these vows. The Bodhisattva precepts are an exception, you can take them even without a guru being present. The Dharmakaya and therefore the Buddha is present everywhere, and he himself will be your witness. You can then also imagine all sentient beings being present as your witnesses, too, because they are the ones you are going to serve. When we deeply resonate with this extraordinary resolve, we can just take the vows in such a way. Regarding the meditation, as we did for the teachings of Padmasambhava before, we can look through the transparent veil of Alan as the person reading it and it will be Shantideva himself speaking the verses. Guided meditation starts at 17:34 min

In the silent meditation we are once again asked to balance earth and sky and to proceed at our own pace. After the meditation we finish the transitional process of meditation. The text shows how to get to the point from which you no longer affirm virtue nor do you reject non-virtue; you do not visualize anything; nothing is outside of it. Whereas objects are illuminated on the coarse level by substrate consciousness, on the deepest level they are illuminated by rigpa in the space of all phenomena. However, in rigpa there is no duality between the space and the light illuminating it. The process of developing stable samadhi to realizing rigpa is, simply put, an ever-deepening release of grasping: it might start with a five year-old with a monkey on its belly to feel the breath and release all control over it, and then years later you release all grasping (once again, it sounds pretty simple :)). And once you dwell in rigpa you see how all appearances arise to assist you in your path to full awakening: All mental afflictions are suddenly as great as all virtues. However, it is once again vital not to cling to appearances - just as in a dream. Once you start clinging to dream appearances you are more or less begging to stay non-lucid. However, once you don’t cling to those appearances and realize that nothing can harm you, there’s no reason for you to have any preference. Finally, Alan explains the three ways of becoming a Buddha: 1) you realize the 4 great types of liberation and achieve rainbow-body. That way your body disappears into the energy of primordial consciousness. 2) you become a Buddha while dying or during the transitional process of dharmata 3) you become a Buddha by being released in the nirmanakaya pure realm in the transitional process of becoming, that is you either shift your environment to pure land (the way you practiced during lucid dreaming) or you choose a nice birthplace that gives you access to dharma and then you achieve buddhahood there. Silent meditation cut out at 05:37

On the penultimate stage to the cultivation of bodhicitta we return to the great resolve: I shall free all sentient beings. Alan points how that the deeper this promise sinks into you, the clearer it becomes that it only makes sense from the perspective of rigpa. Also, after having cultivated great compassion you are bound to go on to the other 3 greats - you no longer have a choice. Then the four are like four rivers coming together to a massive stream that will take you directly to bodhicitta. And once again it is important to realize that our perspective is that of rigpa, which is said to be one (in the sense that it’s the one truth) but at the same time infinite (because it manifests in every sentient being) - it’s neither singular nor plural. Alan then quotes Shantideva to inspire us for the meditation. After the meditation Alan mentions how there are two doors leading to the same path: either you cultivate relative bodhicitta and it will lead you to ultimate bodhicitta, or you can go the other way. Towards the end Alan wishes us a good day but then quickly comes back to correct himself. In the sound file the very beginning of his addition is missing, that is why it starts abruptly. Meditation starts at 17:47

At the beginning Alan shares extremely uplifting news as what concerns “Project Contemplative Observatory”. After having failed to build one in India and in Santa Barbara it finally looks as if a promising piece of land in Tuscany is available. The land is cheap and big enough to support not only a contemplative observatory but also a mind center. With retreatants maybe even planting organic food there, it would truly be as close as we get in samsara to a pure land! After a silent meditation we return to the text. Alan explains that the four great types of liberation can only manifest once you completely stop all conceptualization. These four types are then described as: 1) primordial liberation, which means that you don’t need to remedy anything and take no external refuge 2) liberation by itself, because after you have investigated enough (practiced vipashyana) you find clear insight and you then simply release into that insight 3) instantaneous liberation 4) complete liberation, which means that it takes no effort at all Alan then points out that whereas a while ago he quoted Geshe Rabten who argued that all of Dharma either lays the foundation for bodhicitta, is bodhicitta or leads to bodhicitta, this is different from a Dzogchen perspective. From that view all of dharma is a preparation for discovering who you are, and that is rigpa. Not only does Alan contrast the Madhyamaka and the Dzogchen approach in this way, but also by explaining in what ways things arise. Nagarjuna shows that it is not reasonable to say that things exist, nor that they don’t exist, nor both, nor neither. However, from the Dzogchen perspective everything self-arises - but, of course, only from the perspective of rigpa! Silent meditation cut out at 27:18

Alan starts by talking about his last dharma talk and once more making clear that his anger was not directed towards any person, but simply towards a certain view. This is important to stress because in the West often a view is conflated with a person. Alan emphasizes how important views are and they are clearly the most horrible non-virtue of all because they justify any kind of behavior. That is why also Dharma talks can be very intense and unpleasant. If a certain view is being burned and you identify with that view (e. g. that the mind is the brain and your awareness is a cartoon, thus, you are not a sentient being but a mindless robot), the dharma talk will not be comfortable for you and the lama might manifest as wrathful. As what concerns great equanimity we are asked to release all attachment to the near, which means our views. But not only that; we should also release the extreme of peace and the aversion to the world of becoming, that is, as much as we like to be in a peaceful retreat we have to let go of that preference over the uncertain world “out there”. That then finally to the ultimate equanimity which means letting go of the attachment to nirvana. On that note, Alan tells two stories that illustrate these points, one being about a Geshe, who saved a calf from drowning in filth, and the other about Franklin Merrell-Wolf, who experienced such a “complete transcendence of all opposites”. Meditation starts at 47:02

The session begins with a guided meditation on variations of taking the mind as the path, beginning with maintaining peripheral awareness of fluctuations of the breath before single-pointedly focusing awareness on the space of the mind and whatever arises there. Alan then returns to page 182 of Natural Liberation for further commentary on the lines we concluded with yesterday, “Due to being obscured by the three kinds of ignorance, they do not know the manner of their liberation.” Viewed from the perspective of rigpa, even hatred will self-release without any additional antidote. Before we reach that sage, however, it is important to maintain conscientiousness along with mindfulness and introspection in our practice. Conscientiousness is established in non-attachment, non-hostility, and non-delusion, and coupled with enthusiasm, it expresses itself as intelligent, ethical concern. Shantideva discusses conscientiousness in the fourth chapter of A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life and Alan cites a number of passages highlighting the theme that when it comes to mental afflictions, Buddhism is neither pacifistic nor “non-judgementally aware” of whatever comes up in the mind. The Great Bodhisattva declares he is obsessed and with vengeance will wage battle against the enemy, the perpetual causes of all miseries. Returning then to the three types of ignorance, Alan describes the first, “ignorance regarding a single identity”, as the most deeply ingrained. This is the ignorance of our “one nature” as Samantabhadra, primordial wisdom. The second form of ignorance, “connate ignorance” is the delusional identification with a self that is permanent, unitary, independent, autonomous, substantial, and existing prior to and independent of conceptual designation. The third form of ignorance, Alan translates as “speculative ignorance.” It is fabricated, conjured up, and acquired with learning. The most pernicious acquired ignorance of our time, Alan says, is materialism, and perhaps we have not been honoring the fierce attitude of Shantideva in our accommodation with it. Alan reads from an article printed in the current New York Times with the headline “Are We Really Conscious?” The author, a Princeton neuroscientist and psychologist, presents what he claims is a scientific resolution of the mind/body philosophical issue with the assertion that we don’t actually have inner feelings in the way it seems. The brain is not subjectively aware of the information it processes, the author states, but rather is accessing internal models that provide wrong information. It is all an elaborate story about a seemingly magical property, awareness, and there is no way the brain can know it is being fooled by the illusion. There is no subjective experience of the color green or the sensation of pain, there is only information in a data processing device, he concludes. “This is the most grotesque false view I think that I have seen in the history of humanity,” Alan responds. “He says we are mindless computers!” This speculative, learned ignorance, Alan states, is the most superficial of the three types, but it can destroy civilization. “This is my hot kitchen,” Alan says. “And I will torch, I will incinerate, and I will not stop until that is looked on with contempt by everybody.” Meditation starts at 0:20

“Why couldn’t all beings never be parted from sublime happiness free from suffering?” This question beginning the meditation on Great Mudita, Alan says, is a synthesis of great loving kindness and great compassion. After contemplating the ingredients necessary to make ordinary happiness sublime happiness and the causes that lead to it, recall next the kindness of others whose actions helped bring you to this point on the path. In the Dzogchen view, when traced to its deepest source,the true agent of all their actions as well as all your own is Samantabhadra. Recognizing this, the wish to repay the kindness of all beings naturally arises and what better way is there to express your gratitude than with the aspiration that they all actually will realize sublime happiness free of suffering. The aspiration leads to the authentic and realistic resolve to personally insure that it happens and and the meditation concludes with the supplication of blessings from your guru and the awakened ones to enable you to do so. Meditation starts at 37:05

Before the meditation, Alan elaborates on the importance of preliminary practices and the accumulation of merit in order to prepare the mind. However, that is not enough since merit can be lost, especially when generating anger towards a bodhisattva. Therefore, what are the signs that purification is happening? When one ventures into deeper practices, one can get some sense that obscurations are attenuating. Then, the practitioner gains serenity, inner calmness, contentment, composure, etc. This happens not only when everything goes well but even during bad times. Mental afflictions also arise but they have lost power. In brief, a clear sign of having accrued virtue is having an enduring and robust inspiration. When one takes seriously the preliminary practices and they bring about a transformation, then the practitioner is ripened and liberated. The ripening part comes from the preliminary practices, and the fruition of that is liberation. After comes a guided mediation on taking the mind as the path, which is directly correlated to the next passage of the text. After meditation Alan continues with the oral transmission and explanation of the text Natural Liberation on page 180. The main topic is the four great ways of liberation. Thoughts are primordially liberated, self-liberated, instantly liberated, and completely liberated. In this passage we come to see that all mental afflictions are unborn and self-liberating. Moreover, knowing that an instance of thought is unborn and self-liberating, we know that every thought is unborn and self-liberating. Then, by implication one understands the nature of consciousness as being unborn, empty of inherent nature, and self-liberating. Self-liberating means liberating oneself right down to rigpa. And one can do that on the basis of a single instant. This is an irreversible revolution! When you see it and fathom the four great ways of liberation, nothing remains as before. The text says: “Whatever appears, let it go as self-liberating. Do not meditate; let awareness roam freely.” Viewing reality from the perspective of rigpa, all sentient beings are actually free but they don’t know it. They are striving so hard when being already primordially free, self-liberated, instantly liberated and completely liberated. Alan finishes the session talking about the hell realms and concludes that one can’t by any means stay in hell when having great compassion. Meditation starts at 25:16

Alan highlights the practice of balancing earth and sky. The core of the practice is to develop a deepening sense of ease, relaxation and groundedness, while at the same time maintaining and accentuating clarity. Alan explains how he started to practice earth with the Theravada tradition and how everything unfolds until getting to dzogchen. In this session, we return to great loving-kindness. Alan quotes a sutra from the Pali canon in which Buddha addresses for lay people the types of happiness they might cultivate and realize: ownership, wealth, freedom from debt, and blamelessness. The last one directly relates to genuine happiness. Buddha encourages his disciples to find out what really constitutes true happiness and based on this understanding, to pursue it. Once again, it is about wisdom. Alan also quotes another sutra in which Buddha describes three types of happiness: blamelessness and contentment; the one gained from samadhi; and the supreme happiness of complete freedom through realization, which is the joy of knowing reality as it is. Therefore, in this meditation session we will bring wisdom to the cultivation of great loving-kindness. Meditation starts at 32:22

In today’s session Alan talks about the importance of purification and accruing merit in order to proceed quickly along the path. The Sanskrit term for merit is punya, and it literally means power. It is that which propels you along the path. And if you want merit to really flow, then think about what Atisha said about the ability to accumulate merit once you have achieved shamatha. Another way to supercharge your merit according to the Buddha is by concentration on suchness, which means emptiness. And finally, when you develop bodhicitta you accrue merit, and once you are on the level of engaged bodhicitta it will just be an ongoing flow of merit no matter what you do. That’s for accumulating merit. And how to purify? Well, how about shamatha, insight into emptiness and bodhicitta? If you might think that all this emptiness and Dzogchen stuff is just too way up for you, you can’t really do this, then this is one of the three types of laziness, the laziness of putting oneself down. So no excuses, especially since Alan lists the remedies for all three types of laziness! The realizations e.g. of emptiness don’t appear out of the blue, they come from hearing, reading, trying to figure it out, meditating about it, and sooner or later a true understanding will arise. This will still come and go, so you need shamatha to stabilize it, and to get so familiar with it that it becomes the natural way of viewing reality. After the meditation we return to Natural Liberation, continuing from yesterday’s topic of viewing hatred from the perspective of rigpa. Alan gives an advice that he himself has received from Gyatrul Rinpoche when anger comes up in the mind: Don’t be troubled, just look at it and try to trace it back to its roots. The same can be done for the other poisons; craving and delusion. You can trace them back to their relative origin, which is substrate consciousness, and from that perspective all three poisons are nothing other than luminosity, bliss and non-conceptuality. But here in Padmasambhava’s text they are seen not from the perspective of substrate consciousness, but from the perspective of rigpa, and that means that they are nothing other than the three aspects of primordial consciousness: mirror-like, discerning and Dharmadhatu. Padmasambhava states that from the perspective of rigpa hatred never comes into being, is empty of location, and doesn’t go anywhere. Which means, you can’t even lose it. If an Arhat thinks that he has cut hatred at its root, that isn’t really true. You just reduce it back to where it comes from, or better to say, it releases itself if you can rest in rigpa. Silent meditation cut out at 27:25 min

Whereas the Four Immeasurables are the best friends of Vipashyana in weakening the mental afflictions before wisdom finally gives them the rest, the Four Greats go much deeper, lifting the last veils to become a fully awakened buddha. In this meditation of Great Compassion we attend to the different layers pertaining to the question why all sentient beings couldn’t become free from suffering. We should take this question really serious, it is not meant to be a philosophical question. Alan gives the parallel to medicine, where a resolve was made to free all human beings from the suffering of Ebola or other diseases, and with intelligence and effort it is made a reality. First we have the blatant suffering that is caused by hatred, which means caused by views i.e. of racism, and these views could be eradicated - not the people that hold these views, they are equally worthy of our compassion. This type of suffering pertains to specific problems that we encounter, and each of them could be addressed, one by one. For those of us who cannot become full-time yogis because of responsibilities for their families etc., we can alleviate this type of suffering by acting as bodhisattvas in our daily lives. The next layer is the suffering of change, which is related to craving and attachment. It could be solved by being content, by valuing eudaimonia over hedonic pleasures, and the way that leads out of that suffering could be taught to children from kindergarten on. And finally, we have the deepest level of suffering, the all-pervasive, existential suffering related to delusion. This depth of suffering can only be addressed by wisdom, and we find the wisdom capable of this in every religion, in true science and philosophy. If we look deep enough, we find the Great Perfection in all of them. Alan ends with a great appeal to all of us. Since scientific materialism with its consumer-driven way of life, its worldview and its hedonic values is dragging human civilization down into an abyss, the primary responsibility for each of us is to save this planet. Guided meditation starts at 36:30 min

Alan reminds us that the text by Padmasambhava strikes one as religious and mystical if viewed from a eurocentric perspective. However, it is utterly important to acknowledge that while eurocentric concepts have been of great value in certain areas, these are CONCEPTS - not truths. Thus, if one steps outside the domain of eurocentric culture one has to be careful with applying the same concepts and frameworks. In a buddhist context, the text appears and presents itself as sound science, providing knowledge as well as specific techniques to reproduce the knowledge. Alan then shows just how eurocentric media and science are when he quotes at length an article about a scientific study that “for the first time” proves that people can be aware of their surroundings up to 3 minutes after the heart has stopped beating and the brain has shut down, which means after clinical death. To many cultures, this is not exactly breaking news… However, despite the flaws in the article it shows how some scientists are willing to probe into such issues and with each study done the framework of scientific materialism crumbles ever more. The dominoes have started falling. Alan then gives a short update on how creating a contemplative observatory in Europe might actually be realized. After the silent meditation Alan goes back to the text which deals with the questions of what to do when you come out of meditation. Silent meditation cut out at 49:37

Once again we come back to the culmination of the 4 immeasurables: the cultivation of equanimity. By way of referring to the Dalai Lama as well as a Tibetan aphorism Alan emphasizes the importance of wisdom and compassion. We need both and they need to be balanced. As what concerns the meditation, Alan asks us to release all identification with the body, mind and even awareness (almost like Watzlawick in his explanation of “the pursuit of unhappiness” Alan gives an easy recipe: if samsara hasn’t dished up enough suffering for you, it’s best to start identifying with ever more things!). The only aspect we are told to identify with in this meditation is all sentient beings: Think of whoever appears in the space of your mind as a person who has once been your mother, brother, sister, father, etc. In this manner, practice equanimity. Meditation starts at 36:19

In his brief instructions before the silent meditation, Alan reminds us of the importance, before all else, of releasing control of the breath. After the silent meditation session, Alan returns to his commentary on the text (page 178, Natural Liberation) and explains the meaning of the statement, “When meditating, do not meditate on anything at all, for in the absolute nature of reality there is nothing on which to meditate.” At the conclusion Alan answers the questions: - How different is it necessary to make the posture when ready to fall asleep after meditating in your bed for a time preparing to fall asleep? - For those of us who have not yet ascertained rigpa, how do we practice Dzogchen? The break for the silent, unrecorded meditation starts at 2:34

Alan begins by emphasizing once again the importance in Dzogchen of the relationship between the student and the guru. In Sravakayana practice the guru is regarded as an emissary of the Buddha. In Mahayana practice the guru is viewed as if he or she is the Buddha. But in Dzogchen it is paramount for students to view both the guru and themselves as being free from the illusory qualities of a sentient being. The faith students have in their guru, in Padmasambhava, or Samantabhadra is rooted in the faith they have in their own buddha nature, which expresses itself as intuition. The meditation that concludes the session is on cultivating mudita, empathetic joy. Take delight in virtue you see performed in the world and feel satisfaction and gratitude for the activities of those who promote the hedonic well-being of others and those who inspire others to pursue genuine happiness and its causes. Rejoice also for those devoting themselves single-pointedly to liberation from samsara as well as the good that you yourself have brought to the world. Meditation starts at 1:00:40

Alan reminds us that the advanced practices of “not meditating on anything” (page 176, Natural Liberation) are intended for those who have already achieved Shamatha and the insights of Vipashyana, and identified rigpa as well. The job at this point is to rest there in pristine awareness and view the display of appearances from that vantage while releasing subtler and subtler forms of grasping. After 44 years of gathering data, Alan has confirmed for himself the hypothesis that once the aspiration for genuine happiness begins to orient your life, the universe will rise up to meet you with blessings. Although the universe is eudaimonically friendly, it is not necessarily hedonically friendly. The blessings bestowed when you need them support the development of wisdom not comfort. After the silent meditation Alan comments on the practice described here in the text of using visual awareness to discern external and internal space. Between sessions one should engage in all activities with the meditative equipoise gained during the sessions, a practice we should remember after we leave retreat. The break for the silent, unrecorded meditation starts at 44:04

Alan prefaces the meditation with his reflections on compassion being a hard sell to avowed materialists. If not sick or dying, cultivating your own hedonic pleasure seems a good bet. But materialists who truly open their hearts to the suffering so apparent in the world today, risk being crushed by despair. Materialists, Alan says, must protect themselves from their worldview with an Orwellian-type “double think,” denying the hedonic states of others. But true protection from despairing over others’ suffering, he says, occurs only when it is viewed with the pure vision of pristine awareness. Thus, bodhisattvas are able to be always spontaneously cheerful while simultaneously on the verge of weeping over the suffering of samsara. Meditation starts at 23:15

Alan starts the session commenting on the importance of the sense of community and supporting each other. Emphasizing this, he explains a story of Ananda to illustrate that having spiritual friends is the whole of the practice. After the silent meditation and before entering into the third and final bardo that we will be focusing in this retreat, Alan does a recap from the beginning of the teachings to place in context the upcoming chapter. The overall theme is the decrease of grasping. If grasping is occurring the view isn’t there and one is not viewing reality as it is. There is a gradient in grasping from extremely coarse to extremely subtle. The aim of all these practices is to release all the layers of identification and grasping along the path. We make the segue to the next chapter on page 169 of the book Natural Liberation: the transitional process of meditation. Alan mentions that the prerequisite for the practices of the transitional process of dreaming is the achievement of shamatha and vipashyana, while the prerequisite of this next transitional process of meditation is the realization of rigpa. After that, comes the process of rigpa releasing itself from all concepts, grasping, veils and configurations. In this phase one gains mastery over pristine awareness. One can identify it and dwell on it for as long as one wishes without grasping and without conceptualization. This is where one moves to the mode that simply sustains the dzogchen view at all times, not doing anything other than resting in rigpa. At the end of the podcast Alan responds to two questions: 1.- When meditating in taking the mind as the path, a participant experiences a very continuous flow of images and wonders if this is an indication of grasping. Also he mentions that his appearances resemble those when he is falling asleep. 2.- A speculative question on a sravakayana arhat that realizes emptiness. Can he realize pristine awareness and attain enlightenment if he practices all the practices of dream yoga? Silent meditation cut out at 09:19 min

This short podcast includes a meditation on compassion focusing on the three types of suffering: suffering of suffering, suffering of change and pervasive compounding suffering. Meditation starts at 05:31

Alan started the teachings today with the question of how we know whether we are practicing dharma or not. After all, you could e.g. do shamatha just as a technique for relaxation. What makes it a dharma practice is when you have a definitive sense of emergence from samsara, coupled with a vision of the path that will lead you all the way up to liberation. If we want to further empower, to supercharge our practice, we should practice from the viewpoint of being indivisible from our root guru. After the silent meditation we went on with the Natural Liberation. Padmasambhava describes the method of apprehending the clear light of realization, which is equivalent to the vertical aspect of pristine awareness, leading into the depth of reality. Then he introduces a method for apprehending the visionary clear light of experience, and that corresponds to the horizontal aspect of pristine awareness, fathoming the breadth of reality. By doing this method one can become aware of the physical environment while being deep asleep. Alan compares that to out-of-body experiences of brain dead people, who can also have a clear apprehension of their surroundings, witness conversations going on etc. Then in a second session Padmasambhava explains a method that lets you fall into deep sleep with an energetic boost, by visualizing a red bindu within the central channel at your heart, and apprehending the clear light by this way. Alan then comes back to the question how much Buddhist background one needs in order to do such practices. According to his own guru, Gyatrul Rinpoche, it is sufficient if we are intuitively drawn to such practices, have faith, aspiration and a deep yearning to practice. After all, how do we know with what karmic seeds we were born with, we might be really qualified to practice this without even knowing our qualifications. Question: Q1: In empathetic joy the near enemy is frivolous joy, the remedy is loving-kindness. Could you explain that? Silent meditation cut out at 14:08 min

Before our session of loving-kindness Alan lists some of the benefits of the practice, like sleeping and waking up in comfort, having no bad dreams, being able to die unconfused etc. After the meditation he comes back to the old problem that one does a practice, even doing it correctly, but then having doubts about it. For loving-kindness one might think that there is no feeling of warmth and affection coming up during the practice, so this can’t be it. But actually there are indications that you do it correctly, and it’s not about generating feelings or emotions. Those can come with loving-kindness, but not necessarily have to. You could also have just emotions, and no loving-kindness at all, since loving-kindness is an aspiration. As a result of the practice one should observe that whenever one sees a sentient being around one that is in need of help, one is more and more poised for action, and one has less and less of an internal struggle or resistance to helping. This implies that you really attend to other beings, “drink them in” as Shantideva calls it. For the practice in-between sessions Alan suggests to conjoin loving-kindness with the breath whenever we attend to somebody around us. Meditation starts at 17:44 min

Alan started the teaching this evening by posing the question why we should venture into these practices of apprehending the clear light of deep sleep at all, when he repeats all the time that this is meant for people who have achieved shamatha and vipashyana. According to one advice he has received, one should spend around 75-80% of the day’s practice on something one is familiar with, that corresponds to the actual state of maturation one has reached, and from which results an observable effect in our daily life. But about 25% of the practice should be spent on what we are not quite ripe for at the moment, but which gives us a vision of where we are aiming to go. Then Alan emphasizes the importance of taking our body seriously, to give it a chance to calm down, to heal in our practice. This is often overlooked in all schools of Buddhism, while the Buddha himself found it important to first get his body back into balance again before he was determined to totally go for enlightenment. And to achieve this healing of our body he again recommends Mindfulness of Breathing, with having a special eye on the phase where the breaths become short, they can be either deep or shallow during that time, since this is the phase that is most soothing for the energies and for the body. During this phase we should be releasing deeply into our breath. After the silent meditation we went on with Padmasambhava’s Natural Liberation. During one meditation session of apprehending the clear light one should focus the awareness again at the heart, and without losing the sense of indivisibility of luminosity and emptiness just slip into deep dreamless sleep, and the clear light will be apprehended. For those who find this just too simple and who want to go for something more elaborate, he then recommends another meditation session where one apprehends the phases of dissolution of the elements, starting with earth dissolving into water etc. This same process happens during the dying process, so again this practice provides the ideal preparation for dying lucidly. Alan then draws a parallel of the end of this dissolution process, where air dissolves into the conditioned consciousness, and then the conditioned consciousness dissolves into the clear light, with the last phases of Settling the Mind, called absence of mindfulness and self-illuminating mindfulness. Questions: Q1: How does a dream arise out of rigpa? Silent meditation cut out at 27:52 min

In today’s teaching we focused on the preliminary practices (Ngondro). If we do Mandala Offerings etc. with blind faith and without any understanding of their meaning, and instead just engage in an empty ritual, such action is meaningless according to Shantideva. 100 000 * 0 stills equals 0. But if there is really faith and understanding behind our practice, there will be signs of purification sooner or later. Then Alan quotes several Mahayana Sutras that emphasize the importance of meditative equipoise, shamatha, as a foundation for all higher realizations. This doesn’t mean that you can’t have an insight into emptiness or an experience of rigpa, but you just will not be able to sustain it. After the meditation Alan quotes from Dudjom Rinpoche that according to some the main practices are most important, but to him the preliminary practices are most important, and Alan stresses that this is really shamatha, bodhicitta and vipashyana. If you focus on these practices, you can lead a life without regret. Meditation starts at 22:11 min

Before the silent meditation Alan briefly reviews what he has already explained a couple of days ago: If the visualizations keep you awake or you just can’t visualize them, then it’s better to either settle your mind in its natural state (if you tend to fall asleep easily) or practice mindfulness of breathing (if you’re one of the poor souls who can’t fall asleep). After the meditation Alan once again looks back first only to then venture into the practice associated with dreamless sleep. As said before, in the dream state your power of imagination is more brilliant than in the waking state unless you have very stable samadhi. What you see in your dreams then, are the effulgences of your substrate. This is important to note since an encounter with Padmasambhava or Einstein (or Lady Gaga for that matter…) is quite likely not really Padmasambhava/Einstein/Lady Gaga but your imagination of them. While real encounters in the dream state happen (more so with Padmasambhava than with Lady Gaga, so I’ve heard), you have to be an experienced practitioner to be blessed with such an event. However, just because it’s not “the real thing” it does’t make it worthless - quite the contrary, as such dreams are rehearsals or good preparation for when it really matters. Alan then goes into the text and explains the five poisons that are mentioned from different perspectives. The poisons (craving, hostility, delusion, envy and pride) are mental afflictions. So, if you become an arhat then just vanish and all the seeds for those afflictions are terminated. However, from a Vajrayana perspective then don’t simply vanish. Rather you maintain pure vision (as well as possible) and, thus, once mental afflictions arise you see their empty nature by the power of your imagination. Consequently, you don’t terminate them, but transmute them - you see them as facets of primordial consciousness, take away all their energy and use them for your path to enlightenment. From a Dzogchen view, however, even that is unnecessary because you can also simply release those mental afflictions. You don’t have to imagine anything, and neither do you have to terminate anything, you simply view them from the perspective of rigpa. Silent meditation cut out at 11:46

Since in October 1950 Tibet was invaded by Chinese troops and has been oppressed ever since, today is a good day to practice Bodhicitta. Alan tells the story of a Geshe Rabten he interviewed several times to be able to write down his life story. This Geshe explained to him that all of Dharma appears to him as either 1) being preparation for bodhicitta, 2) being bodhicitta, or 3) flowing out of bodhicitta. This underlines the importance of cultivating bodhicitta and not striving for the achievement of nirvana and then leaving everybody behind - which Alan sees as the only situation in which the phrase ‘ignorance is bliss’ is actually true. However, this would be to realize only half of your buddha nature. Alan then starts with pieces of his own biography and how he was unsatisfied in his twenties with western, secular education as it was too fragmented and not infused with meaning. It seemed to have no center. What Alan later encountered and what the Dalai Lama often emphasizes as another way of educating people is that the core of all of education should be the science of the mind - that is, understanding the whole universe of experience from the inside-out. In a traditional Nalanda approach, there are four doors that lead to this center: 1) Healing: Whether you are a doctor, therapist, physiotherapist, etc. your aspiration is to heal. But you do not stop with healing the body - you see the interconnectedness of body and mind and therefore strive to heal all afflictions. 2) Reasoning: This concerns people with sharp minds such as philosophers, mathematicians, (quantum) physicists, etc. Their aspiration is to penetrate deep enough by way of logic so they will find nirvana. This is what is meant by the perfection of wisdom. 3) Creating: Technology, all of the arts, architecture, engineering and the like are in this category. Here the goal is to create in order to be of service to other sentient beings. However, here again one should acknowledge that one is also one’s own creator by being able to shape one’s mind. 4) Sound: This category relates to music, the voice and truth-speaking. All four lead to the center - science of the mind - which marks the fifth category: the inner approach, which goes directly to the center. Alan finishes his talk by citing Shantideva. The quote shows how one should not just aspire for bodhicitta but really engage in bodhicitta up to the point at which a continues flow of merit marks one’s actions, even if one is distracted or asleep. Thus, in such a state no matter what you do, your motivation to do it is always bodhicitta. Meditation starts at 46:59

After some reflections on environmental crises and the radical inequality of the distribution of wealth in the world, Alan guides a meditation on Balancing Earth and Sky, the combined practice of mindfulness of breathing with awareness of awareness. After the meditation, Alan continues with his transmission and commentary on the text Natural Liberation with the discussion that begins on page 157 of dispelling obstacles to lucid dreaming. The obstacles of waking up and losing the dream because of excitement at initial lucidity; becoming non-lucid after initial lucidity; not becoming lucid at all; not being able to sleep; and having shallow, fleeting motivation each have specific antidotes that can prepare you to recognize the transitional process after death. And have you heard the one about the wishing fulfilling gem that washes up on the beach of a desert isle inhabited by three shipwrecked sailors?

We have finished the cycle of meditations on cultivating the aspirations of The Four Immeasurables and The Four Greats and Alan urges us now to focus on bodhichitta’s indispensable ingredient, the extraordinary resolve that “I myself will do it.” Before making this pledge witnessed by all sentient beings and all the buddhas, we must first know how to deliver on it or we will be making an empty promise. Once made, the promise becomes an IOU with no expiration date. In this silent meditation we should honestly ask what we are willing to dedicate ourselves to. If our pledge is empty rhetoric, we should back off to a level more heartfelt. The break for the silent, unrecorded meditation starts at 38:12

Alan starts the session recalling Gautama’s experience when he endured extreme hardships, which made him lose his samadhi. Alan emphasizes the importance of mindfulness of breathing in order to repair the damage that has been done by neglecting the body. For this reason, it is crucial to master the shavasana posture, to breath effortlessly while relinquishing any control in order to meditate well. The meditation on balancing earth and wind combines mindfulness of breathing with taking the mind as the path. Also in this practice we have been introduced to the world of emanation and transformation of mental appearances. After meditation, Alan uses an analogy to describe the feeling of lucidity as opposed to a wandering mind. Then, we move on to the next section of the book: the world of emanation and transformation. Alan gives advice on how not to lose stability in the dream after becoming lucid. In dream yoga practices we train to transform our dream body into our own personal deity. In this way, one develops pure vision. When dreaming we are in deep samadhi. On the other hand, daytime awareness is very diffuse since we are also attending the sensory field. Taking advantage of this vividness of samadhi, one can transform everything in the dream into manifestations of enlightened beings. Here, one is deepening insight into emptiness through active engagement with transformation practices. These practices prepare oneself for becoming lucid in the transitional phase of the bardo. It is especially important in order to subdue demonic apparitions and upheavals. For this reason, we practice taking the mind as the path during the night time. Alan gives advice on how to take the worst nightmares as the path. At the beginning one doesn’t dare due to clinging to self-grasping. However, with familiarity and a good realization of emptiness, one realizes that whatever comes up, nothing whatsoever can harm you. Therefore, there is no reason to escape and to avoid the situation. The critical point of all this is training in the illusory body and the dreamlike nature of daytime appearances. This enables one to powerfully anticipate the dream state. Meditation starts at 29:38

Alan starts the session with a brief introduction of the meaning of the aspiration of immeasurable equanimity and its etymology. Further, Alan elaborates on the differences of equanimity among the different vehicles. In the context of the sravakayana, which is focused on the selflessness of persons (the emptiness of an autonomous, independent and permanent self), they realize the emptiness of self but not the emptiness of the skandhas, as they consider they are truly existent. Therefore, the practice of equanimity is for the sake of one’s own liberation, to purify their minds and attain nirvana in order to get rid of samsara. It is interesting to see that according to Buddhaghosa, the catalyst for equanimity is taking responsibility for one’s own actions. It is based on recognizing how karma works. Virtue brings happiness and non-virtue brings suffering. In the mahayana context, in which wisdom and compassion work together as the two wings of a bird to fly, not only the self is empty of inherent existence but also the five skandhas. Because everything is mutually interdependent, there is no self without others and no others without self. Therefore, there is no difference between self and others. In this way, the realization of emptiness deepens the sense of equality between self and others and vice versa. Equanimity is an aspiration based in bodhicitta. From dzogchen perspective and having an insight into rigpa, one apprehends what is close as pristine awareness. And one apprehends what is far as samsara, especially when viewing others’ behavior and mental afflictions. Then, one generates the aspiration to release the preference for nirvana, which is what one has already tasted, and abide in equanimity without preference for samsara or nirvana, for adversity or felicity. In dzogchen, equanimity is the equality of samsara and nirvana. All displays of samsara and nirvana are equally pure, samsara being a display of rigpa. Meditation starts at 40:17

After the silent meditation we went on with Padmasambhava’s instructions on night-time dream yoga. He suggests different methods for becoming lucid, in addition to yesterday’s method of visualizing yourself as your chosen deity, with a little resemblance of the deity in your throat chakra. This again should draw the pranas into the throat chakra, where they normally are located while in the dream state. Try to keep the visualization with a light touch, but with sustained intent to become lucid. If this does not work, then imagine a lotus with different seed syllables at your throat. In addition to drawing your attention to the throat chakra there might be an effect of the frequency of the sounds that facilitates lucidity. When that works, you directly end up in deep dreamless sleep, and you enter the first dream like a tulku enters the next rebirth, lucidly. Alan takes us here on a short side trip, starting with the example of dreaming, where your first moment of a non-lucid dream starts with a state of unknowing, and therefore the dream from your perspective has no beginning. There is nothing for you to remember, if you started out with unknowing in the first place. In the same way, during meditation when you get carried away by a wandering thought, this wandering thought has no beginning for you. And even on the largest scale, the same is true for samsara. Since it started with unknowing, avidya, it has no beginning. Alan then points out that the habits we create during our lifetime will show up during the dying process. So if you look at your upheavals during meditation, be sure that this is what comes up while dying. Becoming lucid means that you are free, that you have a choice how the story will go on, and this is what lucid dreaming also prepares us for. If the above mentioned methods didn’t work, then try it with a bindu at your throat. And if you still do not succeed, then there might be obstacles, like broken samayas, and you need to purify before your dream yoga practice actually works. The signs that you might be coming closer to lucidity is recalling more dreams, then the dreams become richer, clearer, and then they will be apprehended. Finally we end with an outlook on next week teachings, where we start to learn how to develop our dream lab, exploring siddhis in the dream state. Alan then proposes a hypothesis: once you have achieved Shamatha, if you become a really good practitioner in dream yoga, training your siddhis in the dream state and gaining thereby insight into the emptiness of all phenomena in the dream state, and in addition train yourself in daytime dream yoga, may that be your ideal preparation to display the same siddhis in the waking state as one who has reached the 4th jhana? Silent meditation cut out at the beginning

Alan started by providing us with the flow of context for today’s practice, Great Empathetic Joy. The Four Greats have the even-heartedness of equanimity as their foundation. The false facsimile of equanimity is aloof indifference, which could lead one to aim only for one’s own liberation. So it is Great Compassion that could serve as a remedy to pull us out of indifference, since it opens our eyes and our hearts to the suffering of the world. Then we move on to Great Loving Kindness, where we focus on the positive that is also found in the world. We then move further on to Great Empathetic Joy, and the classical Tibetan liturgy for that starts with the question: Why couldn’t all sentient beings be never parted from sublime happiness devoid of suffering? It is clear that “sublime happiness” cannot mean hedonic pleasure. To feel pleasure or strive only for pleasure even when the world around us is full of suffering would be a totally deluded attitude. But how is it possible to maintain the state of sublime happiness despite viewing all suffering? The only perspective from which this is possible is the perspective of rigpa. To rest in rigpa, sustain this view and remaining totally inactive, but inactive only as a sentient being, while at the same time being totally active in the world, and all your activity being just spontaneously actualized. Well, right now we only have some foretaste of what this would be like… Alan then shares a story about a yogi up in the Himalayas, and explains how we bring that into our situation. This yogi stated that when he attends to the suffering, he first opens his heart to it with empathy, and out of that some vision arises that there is a possibility for freedom. This means you develop a vision about the causes and conditions that are necessary to bring this about, and that’s what your aspiration is rooted in, that you will bring this about. Then you do what is right for now, and out of that comes your well-being. So what can we do to bring it about, what is good for right now? It again boils down to creating a suitable environment, having companions, spiritual guidance… Wait a minute, doesn’t that sound like a contemplative observatory? Guided meditation starts at 46:09 min

Before the silent meditation Alan talks about how the different practices that we had a look at in the past weeks work together and how they can be balanced in a non-retreat setting. So, Shamatha practice offers us the possibility of leaving the fight-or-flight mode and finally relax. But it is more than just simple relaxation as you develop a sense of ease and acceptance in relation to your identity. As Alan puts it: It’s ok to be who you are now (just don’t stay that way but keep practicing). You are definitely going in the right direction. When it comes to lucid dreaming your Shamatha practice will come in handy because what often happens to novices of lucid dreaming is that they get excited at realizing lucidity and immediately wake up. Thus, what you need is the sense of relaxation and stability from your Shamatha practice. Then, however, you want to engage with the dream, sustain lucidity and explore the dream world. This exploration is actually Vipashyana as you need both vividness and insight. In a non-retreat setting it is then important to balance your practice and really think about what you need at that moment when you sit down. Alan uses the analogy of a fridge full of tasty food: You have a range of practices to choose from, but you have to check your appetite. If you had a rough day you might just want to do the infirmary and not go for more advanced practices; if you feel grounded, you may just as well take the mind as the path; and if you feel balanced already, then why not have a session of awareness of awareness. Furthermore, think about how you combine your choices/sessions. After the meditation Alan goes back to the text and explains several issues concerning night-time dream yoga. He goes into detail as what concerns appearances. In the waking state as well as the dream state all appearances are empty and have the same origin: your substrate. However, the appearances that you experience in the waking state also appear to other people in a similar fashion, which makes them intersubjective invariants. This also allows for the possibility of you dying in your sleep e.g. from a rock (of which you have no experience since you are asleep) smashing your head into pieces: All you will experience is substrate, quickly a lot of pain and then substrate again. Alan then continues and draws the distinction between the appearances and the phenomena. As it says in the text first: All phenomena are LIKE a dream. This means that from the perspective of a sentient being they are dreamlike. However, from the perspective of rigpa all phenomena are part of a dream. Silent Meditation cut out at 19:05

Before the meditation starts Alan talks about the practice we did yesterday, that is great compassion. He underlines that the first question in this meditation - why couldn’t all sentient beings be free from suffering? - is a provocative question and not at all meant as a rhetorical question. Basically, people can suffer mentally and/or physically. Dharma of course offers a solution to the first type of suffering. However, as what concerns physical suffering e.g. caused by aging, sickness and death there are two strategies to deal with it. Option 1 is you find an effective treatment and then you are hedonically better off. Whether that is in the form of a pill, or physiotherapy or reaching the stage of completion, at which point you can change the constitution of your body down to the molecular level, doesn’t matter much. Option 2 is the one you need when there seems to be no effective treatment in which case you need to either release all grasping onto the pain you experience as intrinsically yours or (if you go even deeper) realize the emptiness of the phenomena you conceptualize as “pain” and then withdraw the conceptual designation. Despite the pleasant outlooks that both options offer you will still die at some point…unless you realize rainbow body - the only possible option to cheat death! In a nutshell, this is possible due to the fact that all phenomena are effulgences of rigpa and by realizing rigpa you will be able to reverse the process. Thus, matter will “melt” right back into primordial awareness, which leaves you with no body that can die (put like this it really sounds like a piece of cake, right?). Whereas different types of rainbow body can be distinguished (high, medium and small), these are only different in their appearance but not in their experience of Enlightenment, which is complete and absolute in all cases. Meditation starts at 37:30

In this talk Alan weaves everything that we had a look at in the past weeks together: From Shamatha, Vipashyana, the 4 immeasurables to the Dzogchen perspective. The guiding topic is equanimity and how it manifests in different types. These are: 1) In your Shamatha practice equanimity can be understood as the releasing of action. So when you achieve the 8th stage on the way to Shamatha you can drop introspection altogether, because there no longer is anything to be monitored. In that sense, when you finally achieve Shamatha you release all action. 2) When you achieve the fourth dhyana you experience equanimity in terms of feeling: no pleasure, no pain, no indifference, just flat-out evenness that is peaceful but not pleasant. 3) The equanimity that is cultivated when practicing the 4 immeasurables is again different in that it is imperturbability or even-heartedness. 4) As you continue on your path you will have to back up your samadhi with wisdom and as you develop that you finally slip into meditative equipoise. That is again a type of equanimity as it is absolutely free of conceptuality. 5) Finally, when you reach enlightenment you reach perfect equanimity: You are simultaneously aware of everything and you do not prefer either nirvana to samsara or vice versa. Alan then continues to elaborate on the two ways of walking towards that goal. Path A: You look outside at the effulgences of rigpa and thereby realize rigpa. This is analog to the situation of being in a dream and becoming lucid by looking at the dream phenomena, seeing an anomaly and thereupon seeing the dream for what it is. What is more, this seems to be the path that Western science chose and e. g. quantum mechanics went astonishingly far and deep - so deep maybe that soon, through being able to explain the role of the observer, even more wisdom can be drawn from it. Path B: You look within and you realize rigpa by cutting through the emptiness of your own self and all phenomena. This is of course the Dzogchen perspective in which you develop that type of equanimity which lets you view reality from the perspective of rigpa. That approach is comparable to falling asleep lucidly and then being able to watch the dream come into “being”. Alan ends before the meditation on the note that science as well as contemplative science at their best both look for objectivity. After the meditation Alan just quickly touches upon Night-Time Dream Yoga as we ran out of time. Meditation starts at 55:24

Since we finished the first cycle on the 4 immeasurables we moved on to a new dimension: The cultivation of great compassion. This is necessary due to the fact that it is difficult practicing equanimity when so many elements are just so uneven: You have physically attractive and unattractive people, smart and not so smart, funny and boring, some like you while others don’t, some are more virtuous and some less. So, if our physical appearance, our personality and our psyche is all there is, then we will face a hard time practicing equanimity. Thus, we need wisdom - wisdom of emptiness of self and all phenomena. It is the wisdom that really gets to the roots of the problem, which is delusion. While practicing equanimity in its basic form we can overcome aversion and attachment to a great degree, but we never get to the root (delusion). Apart from that, Alan explains the meaning of what Westerners often just perceive as “the Asian way to say hi”, that is having your palms pressed together and turned inward with your thumbs pressing against each other. This is to symbolize Buddha-nature that is at the center, the two thumbs symbolizing method and wisdom - and therefore, when you bow to someone and make this gesture, you bow to the Buddha-nature within that person. Meditation starts at 43:28

Alan guides a meditation on the empty fluctuation of appearances arising in open space. In the commentary that follows, he muses about the instant that the breath ceases in the fourth dhyana as being--from the perspective of that meditator--the last trace of having a body. Similarly, the daytime dreaming practice of the impure illusory body leads to an emptying of the body and mind until only awareness and space remain. At that point one is prepared for the practice of the pure illusory body, which begins with perceiving the empty nature your own guru as Vajrasattva. You then perceive the entire world of illusory appearances as being empty of inherent nature and primordially pure, which is good preparation for liberation in the bardo that follows death. To conclude, Alan answers questions about merging mind and space and the role of humor in dharma practice. Meditation starts at 0:40

Alan guides a meditation on the fourth immeasurable of equanimity practiced with still awareness and within the context of taking the mind as the path. The practice begins with allowing someone to arrive in awareness unbidden and joining compassion for their suffering to the in-breath and the wish for their genuine happiness to the out-breath. This tonglen practice can be done between sessions with all beings who make an appearance within the space of the mind. Meditation starts at 5:48

We continue deepening our practice of settling the mind in its natural state, which is considered the optimal technique for dreaming yoga practices. Alan elaborates on reification and the fact that we become so vulnerable to suffer when doing so. Alan gives the instructions for this practice, which is built upon being free of distraction and grasping, either gross or subtle. The perspective we are trying to emulate in this practice is that of the substrate consciousness. We are seeking to approximate viewing the mind not from inside the mind but rather from the perspective of the discerning but non conceptual luminous bright and blissful substrate consciousness, which is the origin from which all the subjective impulses emerge. This practice is a fantastic daytime preparation for lucid dreaming. After meditation, Alan continues with the text on page 145 regarding the ten analogies of the impure illusory body. Alan elaborates on the practice of equalizing when encountering situations that the eight mundane concerns take place and the application of the wisdom of the absence of true existence. Settling the mind in its natural state is the foundation for more advanced practices such as generation and completion stages, trekcho, togal, etc. Alan finishes the session making reference to the signs that makes one to be a good practitioner: not only when one has equalized the eight mundane concerns but most important when one develops an incredible and genuine sense of good cheer, warmth, kindness, joy and wellbeing. Meditation starts at 38:40

We move on to the culmination of the fourth immeasurable: equanimity. It is the antidote to reifying negative appearances that destroy our wellbeing and ruins our relationships with others. In this podcast Alan briefly comments on the powerful and transformative practice of tonglen. Meditation starts at 06:25

In the teachings before the meditation Alan emphasizes that we have a choice in our daily lives whether we let ourselves be caught up in ignorance and delusion or not. This relates to dream yoga, to know the dream as the dream, which means to know that whatever we experience does not really represent something, it is just an empty appearance. But likewise during our waking state, when traumatic experiences or mental afflictions arise, we have the choice whether we want to be a victim and get abducted by them or whether we learn to see them too as empty appearances. We don’t have the choice whether they arise in our minds or not, but we can choose to remain like a piece of wood, as Shantideva puts it, and let them dissolve back into the space of the mind again. If we want to be able to make that choice it is important that we learn to recognize our mental afflictions, thoughts etc. as soon as possible as they arise. The method that can help us do this is Settling the Mind, which we did in the silent session today. Following the meditation we go on with Daytime Dream Yoga from Padmasambhava’s Natural Liberation, and that’s where our magic mirror comes in. In the first session, adorn yourself in a beautiful way (no joke), and praise yourself beyond limits. Let the natural creativity of your own mind come to its full play. When pleasure arises due to your exuberant praises, remind yourself that this body is just an empty appearance, and that there is nothing about it that is actually you. As if that weren’t enough, you will now turn around the wheel and start abusing yourself, and try to be really good at that, too, Padmasambhava is listening… When displeasure arises, again remind yourself that it is just an empty appearance that is abused. Then alternate between praise and abuse until your reaction to it is even. In the second session, you should ideally go to a place where you have good echo, but make sure you are alone. Okay, most of us don’t have such a desolate place, so don’t overdo it this time… When you speak different words to yourself, again remind yourself that your voice is just an empty appearance, too. Then for the mind, all thoughts should be regarded as being of the nature of a mirage. They can’t hurt you, only if you get deluded. Even if you don’t like Settling the Mind, do it at least for one session each day, because this will definitely help you to see your thoughts as empty, and to actually have a choice whether you react to them or not. Alan underlines the importance of this practice, that it could actually be a step towards worldpeace if it were taught in a broader context, i.e. in schools. Silent meditation cut out at 35:00 min

In today’s meditation we took up the topic of empathetic joy again, which is often overlooked when we choose amongst the variety of meditation methods for our sessions. Specifically the kindness that our parents showed to us throughout our lives is something we easily forget, we tend to focus more on the bad things that they did to us. For in-between sessions Alan recommends again to train our prospective memory. On the one hand this regards dream yoga, recognizing during daytime anomalies that we encounter, and remembering to do something, like a state check. Then, when we go to sleep we should remind ourselves to recognize it when we dream. On the other hand, prospective memory can also be trained for empathetic joy, that we remind ourselves during the day to keep our eyes open for others’ happiness and their virtues. We don’t remember things we don’t attend to, so specifically looking out for all the occasions of virtue that we witness, also virtue done by us, will give us more material to recall during our meditation sessions on empathetic joy. Meditation on empathetic joy starts at 05:58 min

The meditation is all about going back to shamatha and Alan’s suggestions are: 1) Do whatever works, 2) As a general recommendation: balance earth and sky, so do mindfulness of breathing but then merge your mind with space. At the beginning of the talk, Alan comes back to the topic of causality, which he addressed in the morning session. He quotes George F. R. Ellis, a brilliant mathematician and cosmologist, who proposed a fourfold model of reality consisting of matter and forces, consciousness, physical and biological possibilities, and mathematical reality. Ellis argues that all of these are ontologically real and, while being distinct from each other, all related through causal links. The question Alan then raises is simply: Well exactly how real are they? He then continues to explain how mereological sums work, that is e. g. that we call the sum of all planets we know, plus the moons, plus the sun, our solar system. However, what happens if you take one planet away? Is it still our solar system? What if just the sun is left? When does it stop being a solar system? The short answer to this question: When we stop calling it that way. This then shows how the basis of designation is never the same as that which you designate upon. Alan then ventures into dream yoga, or what he calls Padmasambhava’s ontological shock therapy and quickly explains that the first step in day-time dream yoga is to recognize that things are not as permanent as they appear to be. Apart from that, Alan points out one major difference between dream yoga and lucid dreaming, namely, that the assumption underlying lucid dreaming is that when you’re awake, you are not deluded, you see things as they are. That is where dream yoga and lucid dreaming fundamentally part ways as in dream yoga as long as you are reifying things and think they are inherently real, you are most definitely dreaming. This is the best and most obvious dream sign you can have. So, wake up, wake up, wake up… Meditation starts at 6:14

Alan talks about the cultivation of empathetic joy, which among the four immeasurables is the one that is often easily overlooked. However, it is extremely important because it’s not simply about being happy, but about cultivating a feeling of a shared joy. Furthermore, it is the antidote for the near enemy of compassion: depression or despair. So when we are cultivating empathetic joy, it is important to note that we are, of course, not deluding ourselves into thinking that all is good. However, as humans have the tendency to focus on the negative, we are merely balancing that out a bit by focusing our attention on the positive in a positive manner. Thus, we change the “What” and the “How”. After the meditation Alan elaborates on our habit of reifying the past. The meditation we just did serves as a good example: How often has it happened that when you do that meditation, you think of the same three or four events? That shows how extremely selective our memory is and how small a portion of our past we actually remember. On top of that, these three events are of course by far not a real representation of what actually happened - they are a story we tell ourselves of what happened, a story that is true only in relation to our cognitive framework in the present. Thus, we have the capacity of reshaping the way our past influences us in the present. These thoughts then lead Alan to talk about the naturalistic approach of Buddhism. This approach is based on observations, observations that any individual can make. Such observation then shows that mental states have as much causal efficacy as physical objects such as rocks, dogs, etc. So the mind is as real as anything else. What might cause confusion, however, is that often scientific materialists nowadays speak of themselves as naturalists, meaning: “Nature is that which is not supernatural; supernatural is that which is not physical.” However, up to this day no scientist has ever been able to show with empirical evidence what the nature of the correlation between subjective experience and neural processes is! Thus, from that point of view all mental states are supernatural. The problem, however, is not that this has not been proven, but that many scientists, journalists etc. act as if it had been proven, which is not empirical. If you look at quantum mechanics which has not been able to make significant progress in interpreting its own findings, you have to acknowledge that at least they are honest about it and admit not knowing what quantum mechanics implies. Whereas in neuroscience many people cover up the hard-problem simply. This is best illustrated by the placebo effect: the name suggests that the placebo is what does the magic, but this is fundamentally wrong, otherwise one could just tweak the brain - but one can’t because it’s faith that does the trick. Alan then calls for action and requests that today’s science, which is largely dominated by wealth, power and prestige, moves beyond that, moves beyond determinism or the theory of pure chance which gives the individual no motivation to act and no moral responsibility for the actions. Meditation starts at 18:54

Alan begins with further instruction on a Dzogchen approach to mindfulness of breathing. After the silent meditation session, he introduces Padmasambhava’s teachings on the second bardo, the transitional process of dreaming (Natural Liberation p. 141) with a discussion of buddha nature. Alan emphasizes that included in this section of the text are practices for seeing the illusion of dream appearances in both nighttime and daytime. Even people who have little recall of their dreams while sleeping will have plenty of practice to do. Break for silent, unrecorded meditation at 11:12

Exploring the wisdom necessary to discern the causes underlying the unease and discontent that characterize our experience, Alan leads a meditation probing our delusory sense of self before generating the aspiration that we and all beings be free of this deepest dimension of suffering. In the teaching afterward, Alan discusses how the misunderstanding of “not self” as “no self” whatsoever can be allied with the tenets of materialist neuroscience to justify the catastrophic view that humans are robots with no moral responsibility. Meditation starts at 5:20

Because a runaway, ruminating mind may still be an obstacle at this point of the retreat, Alan leads a meditation that spirals through the well-known shamatha practices of open presence, tactile sensations of the breath, and taking the mind as the path before settling into objectless awareness. Following the meditation, he answers questions about the role of vipashyana inquiry in awareness practice; a standard for judging the validity of views; dharmakaya as informed and informant; the logic of taking the fruit as the path; and what Buddhism has to offer to people who are mentally handicapped. Meditation starts at 1:10

Alan begins with a clarification of how the practice of silence at a Mahayana retreat is different from that at a Sravakayana retreat. The meditation is on cultivating the aspiration that we ourselves and others be free of the suffering of change and the mental afflictions of craving and attachment that give rise to it. Meditation starts at 24:30

We start the afternoon session with meditation on mindfulness of breathing. After meditation, Alan briefly finishes the commentary on the vipashyana section of the book Natural Liberation. Alan comments on Buddha’s awareness, which is omnipresent throughout space and time. If one can cut through to primordial consciousness, this opens the door to reality. The practices we have been doing are not only for the sake of fathoming the nature of the mind, but also phenomena. Therefore, knowing the mind implies knowing the physical world. Alan elaborates on the topic of tumo, levitating and other incredible and extraordinary experiences arising from samadhi. The role of consciousness has been marginalized by the mind sciences. Alan encourages all of us to create a revolution. Let’s have contemplative observatories! Meditation starts at 00:01

Alan welcomes two new participants to the retreat and emphasizes the importance of friendship and empathy among all of us. Meditation follows on the topic of compassion. Alan explains that there is a meaningful sequence to the four immeasurables with profound wisdom. Loving-kindness involves a vision and action, it is not only an aspiration. We cultivate the causes of happiness for the sake of people to flourish. Elaborating on the topic of loving-kindness, Alan makes reference to the importance of Gross National Happiness of Bhutan versus Gross Domestic Product of USA. We need vision in order to see that samsara and mental afflictions are in the nature of suffering. With this, one needs to have loving-kindness, to know that one is worthy of happiness and to identify the roots of virtue within oneself, otherwise there is no hope. Compassion is about truly opening you heart to the suffering you experience and then opening your eyes to the suffering around you. What we attend to becomes reality. In order to cultivate compassion, there must be vision and hope that it is possible to alleviate suffering. Then, there is tremendous power there. Power to change the world and transform ourselves. Let’s practice dharma. Meditation starts at 21:50