Fall 2014 Shamatha, Vipashyana, Dream Yoga – Details, episodes & analysis

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Fall 2014 Shamatha, Vipashyana, Dream Yoga

B. Alan Wallace

Religion & Spirituality

Society & Culture

Frequency: 1 episode/1d. Total Eps: 93

This eight-week retreat will focus on three of the six transitional processes, namely:

the Transitional Process of Living, with teachings on śamatha and vipaśyanā,
the Transitional Process of Dreaming, with teachings on dream yoga, and
the Transitional Process of Meditation with teachings on Dzogchen meditation.

All these teachings will be based on the text The Profound Dharma of The Natural Emergence of the Peaceful and Wrathful from Enlightened Awareness Stage of Completion Instructions on the Six Transitional Processes, an “earth terma” of teachings by Padmasambhava, revealed by Karma Lingpa in the fourteen century.

The English translation of this text has been published under the title Natural Liberation: Padmasambhava’s Teachings on the Six Bardos, with commentary by Gyatrul Rinpoche and translated by B. Alan Wallace.

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00 Welcome and Introduction to the retreat

Thursday, August 21, 2014 • Duration 00:00

Welcome to Thanyapura Fall 2014 retreat. This session outlined what will be covered in the retreat. The teachings are based on two texts: Padmasambhavas Natural Liberation, and excerpts from Dudjom Lingpa’s Vajra Essence. The teachings focus on three of the six bardos (living, meditation and dreaming). Alan describes himself as a dharma chef, serving up a juicy offering. Shamatha is the starting point. There are 36 people on individual retreats at Thanyapura, but all crew members together - so be considerate to others. Now give up all attachment to this life and devote it to Dharma.

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01 Settling the Body, Speech and Mind in its Natural State

Friday, August 22, 2014 • Duration 00:00

Alan starts off by giving a meditation on settling the body, speech and mind in its natural state. He then elaborates on practices of mindfulness of breathing which follows three steps in the Theravada tradition: Focussing on the whole body experience, being aware of the rise and fall of the abdomen and finally paying close attention to the sensations at the nostrils. Alan, however, presents a Dzogchen approach to mindfulness of breathing which does not follow these steps but proposes to let the awareness rest still. That way you do not explicitly focus on the sensations of the breath, but you are implicitly aware of them - just as in a lucid dream in which your eye movements as well as the rhythm of your “dream breath” correlate with the movements of your physical body. In such a state you are also simply implicitly aware of your physical body but you don’t explicitly focus on it. This then explains how one can transfer from the desire realm (in which you are focussed on your bodily sensations) to the form realm: by simply letting the body do its job without interfering in the natural flow of the breath (the body knows it better than you do anyways!) and letting your awareness hold its own ground. Meditation starts at 01:18

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10 Introduction to Shamatha Without a Sign

Wednesday, August 27, 2014 • Duration 00:00

Alan encourages those following the retreat through the podcasts to obtain a copy of his translation of Natural Liberation, our text for the remainder of the retreat. The meditation that Alan guided is found on page 105 of the text. The familiar quality control monitor of introspection is not mentioned in shamatha without a sign practices because there is no vector for awareness. In this practice the oscillation between the arousal of the intensity of awareness and its release will by itself dispel laxity and lethargy. Between sessions, as you move through the day, try to maintain stillness of awareness amidst the motion of appearances. Meditation starts at 11:42

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11 Awareness of Awareness

Thursday, August 28, 2014 • Duration 00:00

After The Seven Line Prayer of Padmasambhava we jump right into meditation. We continue practicing awareness of awareness. Due to technical problems, however, Alan couldn’t give his talk after the meditation but promised to comment on the practice in the afternoon session. Meditation starts at 06:15

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12 Awareness of Awareness: The Practice of Not-Doing

Thursday, August 28, 2014 • Duration 00:00

After the meditation Alan elaborates on the practice of awareness of awareness, which is unique in the sense that the first phase does not require any effort - quite the contrary! Instead of trying to fix an unbalanced body or mind, you simply give both, body and mind, up. Thus, the path lies in the non-doing, which is simple but not easy. This technique then shows its full strength whenever the body or the mind seem just too messed up to be healed: If it seems that they can’t be healed, simply release them. So whereas with other practices there can be obstacles in your way that keep you from achieving your goals or of mastering the practice, this can’t be the case with awareness of awareness due to the fact that there is no striving. And if there is no striving, there can be no obstacle. After all, where would that obstacle be? Between you and your awareness? What kind of a “you” would that be if it were without awareness? Thus, it is a practice that everybody who has practiced mindfulness of breathing or settling the mind in its natural state has always already been doing - only now you just do this and you drop the focus on the body or the mind. The second phase then requires a bit of effort in that you are asked to oscillate your awareness between intensification and releasing. While doing so you observe who it is that is doing the intensifying and releasing. That way you get a sense of being the agent. But at the very same time you might question the very essence of that agent. Towards the end of the talk Alan explains the differences between Shamatha without a sign and Dzogchen by showing how the same practice can be different if your perspective on the practice shifts. Finally, Alan addresses the question whether you should first get the right view and study and then meditate or the other way around. The “answer” to this question, however, will remain hidden from you, dear reader, unless you listen to the podcast… Meditation starts at 1:17

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13 Continuing Probing into the Agent or the Art of Bending a Rainbow

Friday, August 29, 2014 • Duration 00:00

We continue with yesterdays practice of Awareness of Awareness enriched with the probing into the agent of that which is inverting and releasing the awareness. The theme of todays teaching was the question of whether we have free will or not, which kept Christian theologians busy with quarreling for centuries, and then also philosophers and more recently cognitive scientists. In order to answer this question, “Have I free will?”, we must define what “will” is, what “free” is, what it means to “have”, and all this finally leads us to the question of todays meditation, what this “I” really is. When we ourselves in this experimental philosophy probe into the referent of this word, we first find our own mind, the psyche, that’s limited in its freedom by mental afflictions. When we completely release our own body and mind, we then come down to the substrate consciousness, which is full of karmic propensities and therefore also not really free. So if we release even this, we finally come to realize our own buddha-mind. And that is in its own nature completely free, and at the same time without any choice as it is helplessly manifesting within this world out of boundless compassion. So, that just leaves you with the question: What’s that all got to do with the rainbow bending? Well, go off and get your own rainbow and find out for yourself… Meditation starts at 05:48 min

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14 Awareness of Awareness or Warming Up for the Marathon

Friday, August 29, 2014 • Duration 00:00

In this meditation we send the awareness out into space, starting with the space above, then to the right, to the left and downwards. This method of shamatha without a sign, where we release awareness into an open expanse without any target (again to be done for just one day), is like warming up, the stretching before the final marathon of merging mind with space that should be done until shamatha is achieved. Then we go through some Sanskrit vocabulary that often comes up in Dzogchen teachings, like cittata, tathata, tathagatagarbha etc. We then compare the Western definition of “universe”, which means one (uni) world out there that exists independently of the observer, with the Dzogchen perspective of multiple worlds, one universe for every sentient being. And each universe arises in dependence upon a consciousness, it arises from the karma of the sentient being. So it actually reflects the consciousness, changing with it. When reaching the culmination of the path and you are just about to cross the threshold to awakening, what’s your universe like? From outside you are just located somewhere in Chicago or Phuket, but from the inside you are actually in Akanishta. As you shift your citta, your perspective of viewing reality to rigpa, you shift your whole universe and all the appearances within it. But if you only get a glimpse of rigpa, i.e. by way of instructions being pointed out to you, you slip right back into your ordinary perspective afterwards. So what is obscuring rigpa? The substrate consciousness is obscured by the five obscurations. Rigpa itself is obscured by different layers, like the layers of impure appearances that we see due to our impure vision, then the grasping onto the sense of identity of being a sentient being, the cognitive and afflictive obscurations and on the basis of all of this, the wandering mind. Meditation starts at 15:19 min

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15 Luminosity of awareness

Saturday, August 30, 2014 • Duration 00:00

Alan gives advice on the practice of meditation regarding what to do when the mind feels so cluttered and agitated and how to overcome negativity. He emphasizes the importance to not make a habit of frustration in one’s meditation practice. Alan comments that a disturbed mind is a symptom of unbalance and disturbance of the prana system. Alan strongly recommends to work with the supine position until we master it. He further comments on a technique to stop the chitchat. Further on, Alan elaborates on the approach we are taking from Padmasambhava to meditate first, and later on it comes the view. In the trajectory of shamatha, which is based on relaxation, stability and vividness, we increase brightness and approach the unmediated clarity and luminous of awareness of substrate consciousness. With this practice of shamatha we may break through to pristine awareness and lucidity. It becomes a radical shift in the way of viewing reality from a lucid and awakened state (rigpa). Further on, Alan elucidates the two ways of ascertaining pristine awareness by comparing it with the two ways of becoming lucid in a dream. Alan concludes the session stating that if one really wants to follow this spiritual path he encourages to move on gradually to shamatha based on a strong foundation on ethics, purifying the mind and gathering virtue. Meditation starts at 07:41

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16 Culmination of Shamatha without a Sign. Releasing mind into space.

Saturday, August 30, 2014 • Duration 00:00

In this session we are finishing off the instructions of Padmasambhava. Alan goes right into meditation and the central theme is releasing the mind into space. After the meditation session Alan finishes reading and explaining the section on shamatha from Natural Liberation. He continues giving advice on how to practice in between sessions by way of maintaining awareness of space. Alan quotes Shantideva and illustrates how his thoughts resonate with dzogchen. In this practice we are giving up everything for the sake of nirvana. We are giving up everything we are attached to and everything that we identify with. We surrender all at once by releasing the mind into space! Alan goes back to the book Vajra Essence and explains the procedure to be followed by the three types of beings according to their capacities: great, middling and inferior with regards the practices of the Great Perfection. To conclude the session Alan comments on what Dudjom Lingpa said regarding people encountering these profound teachings. He said that these people had already a vast contact and engaging with Buddha-Dharma in past lives. These teachings only come with a lot of previous momentum. Therefore, do not let yourself be intimidated by these profound teachings. If inspiration arises while listening the teachings, that’s all you need to have in order to be ready for these practices. Meditation starts at 00:50

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17 Merging mind with space

Monday, September 1, 2014 • Duration 00:00

This session begins with the 7 line prayer of Padmasmbhava and on into the meditation. Alan clarifies the two excerpts he discussed yesterday from ‘The Vajra Essence’, and ’The Enlightened View of Samantabhadra’ regarding the placement exam of merging mind with space and the paths that beings of various capacities should take. Listen out for the wonderful response Gyatrul Rinpoche gives Alan when Alan talks about giving up teaching and focusing on meditation (a response we are all happy Rinpoche gave). Meditation starts at 05:33

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Fall 2014 Shamatha, Vipashyana, Dream Yoga – Details, episodes & analysis

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Fall 2014 Shamatha, Vipashyana, Dream Yoga – Details, episodes & analysis

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