Explore every episode of the podcast Fall 2014 Shamatha, Vipashyana, Dream Yoga

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

aka: An insiders approach to understanding reality Alan continues teaching from the text, beginning with the preface before heading into the meditation and the gentle transition from shamatha to vipashana. Following the meditation, Alan discusses the contemplative laboratory concept, and the desire to bring His Holiness’ vision to fruition - breaking down the barriers between contemplative traditions (beyond Buddhism) in the name of research. Alan likens mundane vipashana to science in that it is asking questions. The subtitle of this podcast is explained through how Himalayan practitioners refer to themselves as ‘insiders’ (looking inwards for answers). He (Alan) asked us to strip down our consciousness and make a discovery, reminding us that we are on the ‘fast track’ and there is no time to waste. There was one question relating to being stuck inside the skull, in which Alan references a 1960’s TV show and a soap box in Hyde Park in his reply. Meditation starts at 19:42

Padmasambhava’s first vipashyana meditation is found on page 115 of Natural Liberation. Alan invites those listening to hear these words as the actual speech of Padmasambhava. To examine consciousness we need first to improve the signal to noise ratio with shamatha practice so that we can identify clearly the object of our investigation. It is important to immerse ourselves first in the examination and then afterward find the words to report our discoveries to our teacher. It is vitally important to do this practice with the eyes open. There is a discussion in Dzogchen practice of the hollow crystal kati channel. This channel is different from the central and side channels described in other tantras. It originates at the heart and terminates at the pupils of the eyes. Inside the hollow crystal kati channel at the heart is the bindu of internal space which manifests as external appearances to visual awareness. The hollow crystal kati channel becomes central to the later stages of Dzogchen practice. Meditation starts at 8:23

The meditation was Mindfulness of Breathing with a literal interpretation on the theme from the Pali canon “When breathing in long one knows that one breathes in long”. Alan starts by reading from Dudjom Lingpa’s Vajra Essence, the beginning passage of the first three bardos or transitional phases. Alan stresses that in order to get the most benefit out of these teachings, we should recognize who is presenting the teachings to us. It is important that we don’t reify the teachers, but see through the lineage of teachers that passed this down to us right to Samantabhadra, who stands for our own pristine awareness. According to the Vajra Essence, we are in the transitional phases as long as we are not liberated. The essential nature of the transitional phases is pristine awareness. But since we don’t realize this, pristine awareness cristalyzes into the ethically neutral state of substrate consciousness, which itself doesn’t wander in samsara, but becomes the ground from which a sentient being within the six realms arises. Dudjom Lingpa then lays out the sequence in which the coarse mind of a sentient being manifests out of substrate consciousness. The substrate itself is of the nature of unknowing, and therefore as long as the substrate consciousness is dissolved in the substrate, like a sword being hidden in its sheath, it is in a state of only implicit awareness. Then due to the germination of karmic seeds, the substrate consciousness gets catalyzed and it becomes explicit. Then from the substrate consciousness afflicted mentation (klishta manas) arises, which is the primary root of self-grasping, the raw sense of “me” being over here and “not me” being over there. Then out of this, subtle and coarse mentation (manas) arises, with the subtle mentation being still non-conceptual, a simple differentiation of this versus that, and the coarse mentation being fully conceptual, enabling us to make sense of the world. Finally, the coarse mind (citta) arises in response to appearances. Questions: Q1: In the metaphor of the sword and the sheath, what is the sheath referring to again? Q2: Why does the Vajra Essence state that the substrate consciousness is being free throughout the three times? Meditation starts at 08:02 min

Just as we can answer the question, “Is Michael in the room?” by seeing only his face rather than every part of him, we can examine the mind by looking at an individual mental appearance. In the foundational vipashyana practice of the Four Applications of Mindfulness we pose three questions as we examine mental appearances: 1) Is it static or changing? 2)Is it a well-spring of happiness or is it bound to be unsatisfying? 3)Can I discover an inherently-existent “I” in the appearance itself? We do Vipashyana practice at this stage of the path, because after leaving the meditative equipoise of shamatha, we continue to reify our own minds, which is the greatest obscuration of rigpa. Meditation starts at 58:43

If you believe that the mind is the brain and you’re unwilling to change your opinion, you should not listen to this - otherwise your world view might be shattered. Alan gives a brief historical overview of how the mind was viewed in the scientific community from the 1900s up to today. Starting with William James the mind was off to a promising start: James emphasized radical empiricism and was therefore open to include introspection in psychological research. However, soon after his death John B. Watson, a pioneer of behaviorism, declared that psychology should never use, refer to or in any way work with the concept of consciousness. He simply banned it without giving any empirical reasons for doing so - and people believed and followed him. Later people such as B. F. Skinner argued in the very same vein and such views still dominate academia and the press today. Luckily, there are also some fresh voices out there, such as John Searle, Christof Koch and Paul Ekman, who all (to varying degrees) allow for consciousness to play a vital role and do not simply equate it with the brain. At the end, Alan emphasizes that this is not a case of “Buddhism vs. Science” or anything the like - it really is simply a battle between open empiricism and dogmatism. Meditation starts at 08:29

In an enormously compelling and emotional talk Alan once again tackles how scientific and contemplative communities have tackled “the hard problem”, that is how one can explain the relationship between qualia and its neural correlates. Alan first looks back on the 8th and the 14th century to show how Tibet was once a barbaric force that was then completely transformed by Buddhism. This brought about an immense contemplative culture and tradition that now reaches our Western/modern civilization by way of e.g. Gyatrul Rinpoche teaching Padmasambhava’s text “Natural Liberation” to everybody who is filling to listen with faith. All the while the European civilization was in relation to its philosophical tradition still nowhere! That it didn’t exactly “get better” in Europe shows the dominance of behaviorism in the 20th century and scientific materialism. Furthermore, Michio Kaku’s book “The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind”, which sounds very promising and is all the more disappointing and - if anything - proves that a theoretical physicist with no training in psychology, neuroscience or any kind of mind science should not write a book about the mind. As it turns out, Michio Kaku boldly states that there is a smooth continuum of consciousness from the thermostat (as the lowest form) to humans (the highest form). Thus, the human brain is nothing else than an extremely complex thermostat - which sounds very much like Aristotle’s theory (which is equally unempirical) that the brain is nothing but a refrigerator that keeps the body cool. Taken the absurdity of that argument (especially because it’s not backed up by evidence), it might come as a surprise that there are even more people who share that opinion. One of them is Daniel Dennett, a philosopher, who argues that humans are simply largely autonomous robots with no qualia at all! This is exactly what Descartes once assured Europeans of in relation to animals. That very view was then used as a justification for treating animals in such cruel ways that leave most of people speechless. The same view was then used to justify the violence against black people, Native Americans, Jews, and with every other group of people that somehow stood in the way of the dominant in-group. And as different as the historical contexts might be in all these cases, the argument always ran: “They are not like us, they don’t feel the same way we do, they are just animals”. The view that Dennett and the like represent is what Alan calls human racism as the whole of mankind is being treated like mindless robots. One does not even want to think about what atrocities could be justified with such a view of people as robots… Alan, however, ends on a positive note by quoting John Searle and most and foremost Shantideva to inspire us all to do our best to change the world for the better. Meditation starts at 00:13

If you don’t listen to this podcast, you will miss the celestial music that spontaneously manifested in our auditory space, only The Who knows from where! After that musical intermezzo we continued our search for the mind from yesterday, at the end of this session foraying into identifying awareness, even pristine awareness, which will be the dominating topic from this afternoon on. In his teachings Alan highlighted the necessity to come out of the peace of shamatha to arouse the mind for the inquiry of vipashyana. As the Buddha himself found out after he had mastered the deepest levels of samadhi, when he came out of it again, his mental afflictions were still present as before. So you only reach the pinnacle of samsara in the deepest samadhi. If you want just peace, you are wrong here, vipashyana is meant to be upsetting. Then we came back to yesterdays topic of this psychotic split between ones views and ones everyday behavior. If we don’t bring Buddhism into the 21st century, this same split takes place in us, the split between the “Sunday mentality” with its unquestioning, simple faith and the “working-day mentality” where we switch into our intelligent, inquiring, questioning mode. We have to integrate, unify our scientific world view with the religious one. Otherwise our practice will fade out when we leave from our retreat, due to the discontinuity that breaks us apart into two modes of being. Meditation starts at 07:11 min

In the teachings Alan elaborated once more on the topic of seeing ones teacher as the Buddha, sharing some stories about his early times in India which relate to that topic. It is easy to see the really great lamas, like the Karmapa or H.H. the Dalai Lama as totally unlike ourselves, we can imagine them as being Buddhas. But if we see our ordinary lama, who is giving us the everyday teachings, in a different way, because after all they seem to be almost like us, we have just missed the point. Then we practice simple idolatry. We have to see them of being of one nature, all from the same source. Then we had a clarification regarding how to deal with upheavals that come up as a result of the practice, and the comment from Dudjom Lingpa in his Sharp Vajra of Conscious Awareness Tantra is not to reify them, otherwise you will get stuck. The grasping onto them as inherently existing is the problem, not the upheavals themselves. Regarding todays practice, what we have to do here is to release the notion of practicing this from the perspective of a sentient being. There is no effort involved, no modification or fabrication, and it involves not doing anything. There is a dimension here that is always rigpa, and it never falls into marigpa (unknowing), it never wandered in samsara. From that perspective there is nothing to be done, but from the perspective of a sentient being we have a lot of work to do. Questions: Q1: Regarding the long quotation from Karma Chagme Rinpoche in A Spacious Path to Freedom (“What do you mean you can’t…”), and that will be included on the webpage for download very soon. Q2: In regards to the translation of the Compendium of Practices chapter 13, which is translated by Alan right now so it will still take a bit of time, we will receive it later. Q3: Regarding the intensification in the oscillation of Awareness of Awareness. Q4: In intense practice of Mindfulness of Breathing the mind isn’t very sharp anymore. Am I getting old? Q5: During meditation it feels like sounds are passing through my body. Well, that could be The Who again… Meditation starts at 01:02 min

Alan starts the morning session commenting briefly the earlier fairly elaborated discussion on this whole reductionism of our existence to just brains, to being animals or robots. Alan invites us to start a revolution and not fall into the domination of people. Trust your own experience. In a world dominated by materialism, Tina Turner sings: “we don’t need another hero”. This really resonates with dzogchen. We don’t need to look outside again for a buddha. Rather than waiting for another hero to whom pay homage, Alan encourages us to discover the inner buddha inside ourselves. Padmasambhava is not manifesting physically but he does so by way of speech. Dharma speech is the greatest gift. Alan continues talking about the only suitable motivation for dzogchen, which is bodhicitta. Further, he elaborates on what underlies great compassion and the sublime importance to realize pristine awareness. Alan mentions how amazing it is that three great yogis have just passed away in the last week abiding in the clear light of death: two superb monks and one lay woman who had children. There is no time for discouragement, we have options to become realized yogis. Therefore, it is up to us to practice and attain realizations. Hence, it becomes crucial to engage in dzogchen practices in these degenerated times. This is the time in which dzogchen is most needed. We finish the morning session with meditation, in which Padmasambhava’s words are coming directly from his mind. In this way, we receive pointing out instruction directly from Guru Rinpoche. Meditation starts at 35:50

This session starts off with meditation. Following the meditation, Alan elaborates on the relationships with lamas and spiritual teachers. The closer we become to them, the more we identify with them. Therefore, the more we can identify with them with regards pristine awareness. If we purify our minds and maintain pure visions without reifying and making projections, we will be able to identify rigpa in ourselves. Alan reinforces again the importance of the preliminary practices and purification of the mind. The more we fertilize the soil of our own mind, the easier shamatha and vipashana is going to be. There is a sequence in the spiritual path. Before entering the vajrayana, it is crucial to train in foundational practices of the sravakayana such as the four noble truths, the three higher trainings of the path: ethics, concentration and wisdom. Further on, it is vital to engage in bodhisattva’s practices such as the six perfections, the view of emptiness and so on. In this way, there is no sectarianism and we built a strong foundation that prepares our minds for higher practices. With vipashana practices we need to shut off the reification of our own minds and shut off the reification of our own substrate consciousness. We need to realize the emptiness of the coarse mind and the lack of inherent existence of the substrate consciousness. Then, we will be right next to the door of dzogchen. For the last half hour of the session Alan reads and brightly comments on the vipashana section of the book Natural Liberation. Don’t miss Alan’s explanations about the sublime experience of realizing emptiness! Meditation starts at 3:49

This session continues the pointing out instructions from Padmasambhava, to cut through the substrate to pristine awareness (rigpa). Alan gives a preface to the meditation, explaining the ‘eight extremes of conceptual elaboration’ that Padmasambhava uses, and that identifying rigpa is a process of elimination. He also touches on that for something ‘beyond speech and thought’ there is so much written about it, and how to approach the guidance. The later part of the session takes the idea of the mind as empty, and when you emerge from shamatha, appearances are illusory even while engaging in a physical world. Alan quotes suicide statistics, suggesting that many choose suicide due to being enmeshed with the mind. They are betting their lives on the belief that the appearances to the mind exist inherently. Let your awareness be still between sessions. We are on the move, that’s what it means to be a sentient being. Whereas rigpa is still: not because it is held still, it is still because it is beyond time. It is not still versus movement, it is stillness behind coming and going. Meditation starts at 16:41

Alan references different buddhist schools of thought regarding what happens when a sentient being, who has realized nirvana, dies. After exploring the Pali canon, he looks more widely and brings us back to our current meditative practice: pristine awareness (rigpa). Following a brief explanation of the text in ‘Natural Liberation’ (p.125) there were two questions: - one on nyam - and one on being lucid in dreamless sleep. Meditation starts at 01:05

Found on page 125 of Natural Liberation, the morning’s meditation session is a review of Padmasambhava’s pointing out instructions for examining the nature of primordial awareness. Alan then discussed the meaning of the statements that primordial awareness transcends categories of existence and nonexistence; birth and death; singularity and multiplicity and thus is free of extremes. It is also free of “bias and partiality,” but this impartiality is vastly different than the attempt of modern science to view the uni-verse from a “God’s-eye view.” Meditation starts at 5:20

This morning Alan: - asked for volunteers in an experiment over the retreat period - gave the oral transmission of the 7 line prayer of Padmasambhava (that will become part of the practice from tomorrow) - gave a guided meditation on settling the body speech and mind in its natural state, with an emphasis on being aware of the rhythm of the breath Following the meditation, the discussion was on maintaining practice between sessions (listen out for the impressions of a young girl riding her plastic tricycle on the asphalt while screaming - and as soon as you are confronted with such distractions while meditating, simply follow Gyatrul Rinpoche’s advice: “View it!”). Meditation starts at 12:09

Alan introduces a novel but utterly traditional approach to the mindfulness of breathing practice we’ve been doing to develop relaxation, stability, and vividness. After the silent meditation, Alan recounted the story of the wandering ascetic who encountered the Buddha shortly after his enlightenment. If the 32 major marks characterizing the body of a Buddha were there from there own side to be perceived, why did the ascetic pass on with a sarcastic remark? We must grapple with our habitual reification of both a self and phenomena in order to make any progress in Vajrayana or Dzogchen. The break for the silent, unrecorded meditation starts at 20:27

Alan announces that the format of the sessions will be changed a bit in that he will simply give the commentary first, then we should meditate in silence. As we are meditating, we should not specifically focus our attention on what we just heard but simply let our awareness rest in stillness. Very often - in Alan’s experience - this is a good way of letting ideas develop on their own. After the meditation Alan comments on the ups and downs of the quality of our attention. He explains that 1) this is normal in a Shamatha retreat, 2) that stability and stillness will increase with practice, 3) that real stability and stillness in meditation will only be experienced as soon as one has achieved Shamatha, 4) that Shamatha, however, only guarantees stability and stillness as long as one is alive - so when you die, you are lost again. Therefore, only breaking through to your ground awareness offers absolute stability and stillness. Meditation starts at 19:12

Alan first comments on the text once again and explains some of the symbolism involved. He then continues to explain how the formless realm, the form realm and the desire realm are connected: That out of the formless realm emerges the form realm, and out of the form realm emerges the desire realm. He adds that once one is dwelling in the form realm one can see the desire realm that acts almost like a holographic display. You can then manipulate the five elements in the form realm and thereby their displays in the desire realm. However, once you practice the Thodgal phase of Dzogchen, visualizations of the Buddhas come up - whether you are Buddhist or not, that does not matter. After the meditation Alan explains three terms that are central to Dzogchen practice: What they all come down to is giving up everything and thereby “winning” everything. In such an approach you thus take the fruition as the path. After the meditation, Alan answers two questions: 1. Concerning the pointing-out instructions: What does it mean when “mental appearances” merge? And are they sense objects or not? 2. If Daniel Dennett were to go to the valley of rainbows, what would he see? Meditation starts at 38:05

This morning we were listening to Bob Newhart’s “Stop It” skit that Alan had talked about a while ago. So everybody out there with wandering minds, low self-esteem and all the like, take this advice to heart. As for today’s practice, Alan was front loading the session again with Padmasambhava’s pointing-out instructions, giving us the seeds for the silent, non-discursive meditation. Your own distinct awareness is pristine awareness, don’t look outside of yourself, but give up all attachment to and identification with your own body and mind. After the meditation Alan discussed the two strategies to deal with distractive thoughts, emotions etc. in shamatha practice. In Taking the Mind As the Path, you just let them self-release. The other strategy is that, when these distractions come up, to just cut them right off. You can do the same in lucid dreaming when something unpleasant happens. Finally Alan compared the images used by Dudjom Lingpa in his Vajra Essence when describing how sentient beings emerge from the ignorance of the ground with the way Roger Penrose describes light rays. Silent meditation cut out at 26:00 min

Alan starts sharing his experience along the eight eight-week retreats that he has been leading in Phuket. He addresses the importance to practice the four immeasurables and vipashana with a solid foundation on shamatha, but shamatha alone is meaningless. Practicing shamatha by itself does not make you walk the path to enlightenment. Alan explains the two main obstacles for the spiritual path: self-centered and self-grasping. Then, Alan explains how to use mental afflictions in order to transform them into the path. When they arise it is a wonderful opportunity to check if we are reifying. This becomes crucial for the practice of dzogchen. Practice dharma, observe your own mind. Following that, Alan elaborates on what we observe is always relative to the instrument of measurement, either in science or in the investigation of the mind. Alan comments on the important role of the observer. Alan raises the issue described by madhyamika prasangika school and how it resonates with quantum mechanics: when engaging in analysis you can’t find the object of observation. Nowadays information is so relevant in our lives. Therefore the awareness, that is the person who receives and possesses the information is fundamental. Meditation starts at 00:53

Very short podcast where Alan talks of his boundless enthusiasm for the teachings before entering into a silent meditation (not included in the podcast).

Alan gives an alternative approach to guru yoga: asking us to give up our sense of being a sentient being, and releasing the sense of the guru as a sentient being. Meditation continues Padmasambhava’s citation of tantras. After the meditation Alan picks up on John Wheeler’s quantum universe concept that all constructs are coming out of semantic information (and also rely on the ‘one that is informed’, the information and the referent). Not only can the universe be considered an information processing system, but so can ‘man’. This brings us to an empirically based view relative to the observer/participant. Parallels are drawn to madhyamika through the intersubjective invariant. Placebo (subject expectancy) effects are potentially explained through the information and processing model. Throw in some Stephen Hawking, strange loops etc and eventually Alan asks “what if Dzogchen is not the unique domain of buddhists?” Meditation starts at 17:16

Alan tells us this is a good point in the retreat to refresh our motivation and guides the practice he has taught many times, the four-fold practice of arousing loving kindness for ourselves. - May I experience the fulfillment of my heart’s desire. - May I receive from the world what I need to realize my aspiration. - May I realize the inner transformation necessary to realize my aspiration. - May I experience meaning and fulfillment by offering to the world the greatest good possible with my own unique skills and background. Meditation starts at 7:00

For this meditation Alan reads a passage found on page 136 of Natural Liberation in which Padmasambhava excerpts descriptions from various tantras about the nature of primordial awareness. After the meditation Alan discusses Freud’s statement in The Future of an Illusion that a view of the universe that doesn’t take into account the role of mental perception is an empty abstraction of no practical interest. He then proposes a playful approach for how concepts in Buddhist cosmology such as the four continents might be integrated with contradictory scientific evidence without resorting either to fundamentalist denial or opening the gates to all claims and saying they have equal validity from their own perspective. Meditation starts at 0:55

Alan announces that from now on we will spend the morning sessions cultivating the 4 immeasurables. Whereas mindfulness, attention and intelligence are not intrinsically virtuous but can be afflictive, the 4 immeasurables - loving-kindness, compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity - directly lead to the cultivation of virtues. Meditation starts at 14:29

It is crucial for our progress to be able to distinguish the qualitative difference between the clarity of substrate consciousness and the lucidity of rigpa. In the practice of Mindfulness of Breathing, awareness illuminates the field and notices fluctuations in the field produced by the rhythm of the breath. The fluctuations become more and more subtle as continued practice produces a decreased volume of the breath. By following the simple instructions of the Buddha to maintain stillness of awareness while noting that the breath is long or shot and by attending to the entire field of the breath, the practice can lead to the the complete cessation of breathing at the singularity of the fourth jhana of the form realm. Meditation starts at 42:26

At the beginning, Alan announces that from now on there will be more time for questions/discussion in the afternoon sessions. Then he starts the meditation, continuing with pointing-out instructions from Natural Liberation. After the meditation Alan explains one crucial sentence from the text. As he explains that sentence, he touches upon the different understanding of ultimate bodhicitta in the Sutrayana tradition and Dzogchen. In the Sutrayana tradition ultimate bodhicitta is understood as realizing the emptiness of all phenomena and relative bodhicitta as the desire to achieve awakening for the sake of all sentient beings. Now, whereas in the Sutrayana ultimate bodhicitta and relative bodhicitta both have to be cultivated and balanced out (like the left and the right hand) in order to avoid any extremes, Dzogchen once again refrains from that effort. In the Dzogchen tradition you “simply” release all grasping onto your identity as a sentient being and thereby practice from the perspective of a Buddha. From that point of view, achieving ultimate bodhicitta then means that you realize rigpa - which includes the realization of emptiness. Therefore, no cultivation of relative bodhicitta is needed! You don’t need to find a balance, to let the left hand know what the right hand is doing since your knowing goes beyond the split of a right and a left hand. Alan then finishes by taking into account the loving-kindness practice that we did in the morning and connects that to his considerations. Questions: 1) How do you practice critical analysis while keeping the pure view? 2) Concerning intersubjective invariants: Does the vision of e.g. the Dalai Lama (really what you see) only depend on the level of your purity? That is, would an equally pure Buddhist monk, an alien and a dolphin see the same thing when they looked at the Dalai Lama? 3) Given that there are as many universes as cognitive frameworks of reference, does that mean that all cosmological theories are equally valid? Meditation starts at 2:19

In this meditation session, we expand the field of loving-kindness, starting from the sangha listening by podcast into the boundlessness of space. Guided meditation starts at 05:20 min

In today’s meditation Alan went on with the pointing-out instructions from Natural Liberation. In the teachings Alan discussed the different levels of teacher-student relationship and how we can bring the Indo-Tibetan understanding of it into our modern world. In a way the relationship between teacher and student is completely symmetrical, and that regards the courtesy and respect between both sides. Where it is not symmetrical is on the level of knowledge, the student comes to the teachings to learn, the teacher to be of service, and the relationship is established totally for the sake of the student. In the Indian tradition the teacher is called guru, and that could be translated for us as spiritual mentor, somebody who has a great knowledge and leads us to true insight. The Tibetan understanding of lama is different from that, it is more a spiritual guide, somebody who is leading you along a path, so that you don’t fall into pitfalls or have to take detours or the like. But that means that you need trust in your spiritual guide, that he will actually be able to help you along the path. Then Alan gave some commentary to the pointing-out instructions from today’s meditation, and finally he ended on his rationale why he keeps giving us all these citations from philosophy, science and the like, in order to help us to respond to our non-Buddhist environment when we are asked what we actually do and why we are doing this. Meditation starts at 03:00 min

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

Due to technical problems we apologize for the sound quality in the first eight minutes. Alan invites us to start each morning with the recitation of The Seven Line Prayer of Padmasambhava as a preliminary. We recite it in Tibetan accompanied with the visualization and mantra recitation of Padmasambhava in order to receive his blessings. Following the meditation, Alan quotes a verse of the 100.000 verses of Perfection of Wisdom Sutras in which it claims that by achieving the the fourth jhana one achieves a number of paranormal abilities or siddhis just by the power of samadhi although it is still tainted. When samadhi is imbued with vipashana it becomes untainted. Then, Alan compares spiritual development with running a business, one has to create the causes for shamatha to be achieved and not just pray to receive siddhis. Alan encourages us to practice by quoting William James and His Holiness Dalai Lama, emphasizing that it is possible to achieve siddhis in this degenerated era. Alan reinforces the importance to become lucid. If you are not lucid you are just a victim all the time. When the mind becomes empowered, then the laws of physics, biology, etc. start to melt out. However, as long as this power is not manifest, the mind is just dysfunctional. Therefore, Alan invites all of us to bring about a revolution right now! Meditation starts at 08:08

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

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

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

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