← B. Alan Wallace

Four Immeasurables Retreat with B. Alan Wallace - Sydney 2014 (part 3)

B. Alan Wallace · 2014 · 2 h 49 min · Vajrayana Institute via Internet Archive

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  • 4:51

    So, for example, if you decide, if you make your own free choice, but a voluntary choice, as we will do momentarily, to spend 24 minutes developing your skills of relaxation, stillness and clarity. I think, at least dynamically, this is a good idea. This would be a worthwhile way to spend 24 minutes. But then, of course, as you're sitting there within a matter of seconds, the chatter starts in the mind. Well, it's not simply like meditating in a busy train station. It's meditating in a busy train station where everybody's out to kidnap you and throw you on one train after another after another.

  • 7:31

    And so he's worked with very, very smart undergraduates, Harvard and so forth, and he found seven seconds, among the best and the brightest, seven seconds. That's how long they can last before they're swept away by the current of some obsessive, compulsive line of thought. Catches by the neck, throws them away.

  • 12:41

    Don't do that. Don't put the mask on your child first. Put it on yourself first and you'll be in a much better position to help other people. But do it yourself first. We've all heard that many, many times. It's a wonderful thing to direct our loving aspirations to the well-being of others. It's a noble thing. One more thing that's not debatable.

  • 59:23

    Well, that's simply invasive. But he is a benevolent person, and he's used this in very constructive ways. But the simple point is that we're attending to another person, but doing so in a very discerning fashion, a very careful fashion, and then picking up quite clearly with a hydrative, how do you say, good inference. If one is well trained, you can have actually some great sound insight into the emotion the other person's experiencing. He speaks of seven. But that's clarity, that's vividness, that we're not only attending to another person with a sense of ease, not only attending to a person with a mind that is clear and not completely muddled up with our own thoughts, expectations and so forth, but we're also attending with clarity, with discernment, with intelligence.

  • 1:17:47

    It's true. We're the first beneficiaries. Greater emotional equilibrium, not so easily upset, thrown out of whack. So that's what the Buddhist may be getting at, at least in part, when he says what a person considers and reflects upon for a long time. Is it all about our own well-being, as important as that is?

· · ·

0:47 We'll continue the discussion, reflection, the data cultivation of. I mentioned again a very important point. It's interesting that it traces all the way back to the Buddha, ancient times in India. And that is the Buddha did encourage that one cultivates loving kindness for oneself. Not in the sense of being self-centered, not in the sense of placing a higher priority on one's own well-being over that of others, of course not, but developing a benevolent attitude, a friendly attitude. Report an error

1:20 With respect to oneself. Good idea. He made a remarkable claim. He said, one who loves himself will never harm. It's a nice quote. A terrible quote. And clearly, let's just cut right through any superficial interpretation of that. Just really quickly. Report an error

1:44 Loving oneself is not being infatuated with oneself. Narcissism, self-aggrandizement and so on. It means simply, but I think we all know what it means. I think benevolent. That you can sit quietly in your chambers and find a Report an error

2:03 And so in this regard, as an act of loving, I know I'm sure, it will serve us all well to overcome a tendency that has been around for as long as probably human beings have been around, but it's especially prevalent now. It's now become virulent, like a major outbreak. And it's what I call only quasi tongue-in-cheek, obsessive compulsive delusional disorder. Report an error

2:31 By that I mean not any clinically diagnosed mental problem. But something that is in fact quite ubiquitous, and I'm choosing each adjective quite closely. Report an error

2:44 Obsessive, and that is when we wish to sit quietly. Our Report an error

2:52 minds were truly sound, they were sane. To be quiet, mentally, that Report an error

3:06 doesn't generally happen, does it? That's why I call it obsessive. A person who eats and cannot control overeating, you say he's an obsessive eater, right? Not healthy, but can't control it. Obsessive drinking and so forth and so on. Obsessive where you know it's not good for you. I can't Report an error

3:43 imagine how it would be when you can't be quiet when you like and then activate the mind creatively, analytically, memory, fantasy, daydreaming, whatever you like. There are many things we can do. Report an error

3:56 We should be able to do that with our minds. It's common sense. That would be clearly a symptom, having a healthy mind. So there's obsessive, and that is we can't simply, most of us cannot simply be conceptually quiet. We can't turn off the internal commentary at will, and we should have that ability. Just like... Report an error

4:24 Not overeating or not having to compulsively smoke and so forth and so on. So that's one part, obsessive. But then I add the word compulsive. And it's not only that there's noise in the mind. It's just the chatter, the commentary, the ongoing blah, blah, blah of the mind, which we all know so well. It doesn't stop there. Report an error

4:43 Something more pernicious happens. And that is this compulsive quality. That is the thoughts come up and they tend to drag the attention. So, for example, if you decide, if you make your own free choice, but a voluntary choice, as we will do momentarily, to spend 24 minutes developing your skills of relaxation, stillness and clarity. Report an error

5:06 I think, at least dynamically, this is a good idea. This would be a worthwhile way to spend 24 minutes. But then, of course, as you're sitting there within a matter of seconds, the chatter starts in the mind. Well, it's not simply like meditating in a busy train station. It's meditating in a busy train station where everybody's out to kidnap you and throw you on one train after another after another. Report an error

5:33 You'd like to sit quietly in the train station. You'd like it to be quiet. You don't have control over that. But these doggone people who are coming into the train station, they keep on grabbing you by the scruff of the neck and throwing you into one train after another train after another train. And you're saying, you know, help, help, I need a protector here. Report an error

5:48 I keep on getting carried away, abducted, hijacked, thrown in the trunk of somebody else's car. That we're not able to maintain the stillness, we're not able to maintain the poise, the collectedness. I'm getting hijacked and then only retrospectively as if somebody put chloroform over the face and then we wake up in somebody's trunk. Report an error

6:11 Where am I? Oh yeah, I was meditating some time ago. Can't quite remember when I stopped. How did I get here? So that's compulsive thought. It drags us in. And we didn't choose to. It wasn't the Stockholm Syndrome. We're not in love with the people who are abducting us. They just do it. And they do it again and again. Report an error

6:33 William James, again, one of my heroes, a great pioneer of American psychology, when he was looking, and he made a lot of brilliant comments, really, especially considering how, frankly, primitive the science was at the time. It was just beginning, so why wouldn't it be primitive? But he said, in terms of the ability, in terms of research that he knew of, I don't know that he did it himself, that... Report an error

6:55 In terms of the research, you know, for ordinary people, their ability, when they decide to focus their attention on some object, some stable object, they can do so for about three seconds. Three seconds and then they're affected. That's how long you get to stay in the train station. Be so peaceful, somebody's blindfolded you, gagged you and thrown you on some train, you don't even know where it's going, you know. Report an error

7:15 Three seconds. I know a person who used to be at Harvard, and now he's at Stanford, very, very fine, a psychologist named Stephen Koslan. Quite eminent. So he's done a lot of research on mental imagery and people's ability to generate mental imagery and then sustain that. And so he's worked with very, very smart undergraduates, Harvard and so forth, and he found seven seconds, among the best and the brightest, seven seconds. Report an error

7:41 That's how long they can last before they're swept away by the current of some obsessive, compulsive line of thought. Catches by the neck, throws them away. So that doesn't sound very good. It doesn't sound like you really have a mind. I mean, you have a very short lease. Three seconds, seven seconds. Your lease ran out. Now the mind has you. Report an error

8:04 Since it was a comedy, then I can say it with a smile. But in Little Miss Sunshine, some of anybody who's seen the movie, where they tie the dog behind a station wagon while having a picnic, and then they drive off. They forgot the car. They forgot the dog. Report an error

8:22 So again, it's a comedy, no dog was harmed, so then we can say it's funny. But, you know, they drove off on a dog. Poor dog. Report an error

8:32 So, there's the car and there's the dog. Which has which? Does the dog have a car? Or does the car have a dog? It's pretty obvious, right? So who has who? Do you have a mind? Or does the mind have you? Who is dragging who? Report an error

8:53 So that's the obsessive and the compulsive and then the delusional part. Report an error

8:58 Is it ever so often, not every single time, but very frequently, when some obsessive and impulsive thought arises, captivates us, we're carried away by it, our attention is riveted, focused, yanked over to the reference of whatever the thought is, and thoughts are coming up. Thoughts are coming up. We have a very strong tendency to believe whatever we're told. That is, the thoughts are coming to mind. Report an error

9:22 They're true. In fact, even when we're really flat-out delusional, we may think the thoughts that we're thinking, they're thinking us. Right? I mean, really, we didn't invite them in. We're not in control. They're just dragging us along. It's easy to think, when we're thinking something, that that's the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Report an error

9:39 Well, it never is. I'm going to make a really bold statement. Whatever we're thinking about anything at any time, that's a big statement. I'll say it again. Whatever we're thinking about anything or anyone at any time, whatever we're thinking is never the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Report an error

10:00 It's the nature of thought. It's in the nature of thought. Thought carves. It takes a reality that's very originally whole and then it comes in with a knife and it carves out a piece. And we say something about anyone. Say anything you like about anyone at all. A loved one you know very, very closely. A political figure. Say anything you like. Report an error

10:21 Think anything you like. Summarize that person. Wrap that person up in a thought. And you know you're never saying the whole. You're never capturing the whole. You can't even capture the whole about a glass of water. Think about the glass of water. Whatever you think, it didn't capture it all. And that's just a glass of water. And so that's a big problem. Report an error

10:44 Sometimes when the thought is reality-based, the thought captures a fragment of reality. It may be an important fragment, a valid fragment, but it's still a fragment, not the whole truth. Report an error

11:00 But then, of course, when these thoughts have simply come in unbidden, they just happen to us. They drag us along. Sometimes then these thoughts, They actually have no reality to them at all. They're complete fantasies. They're just speculations. But again, when we're caught up in them in a kind of this quasi-conscious way, even though they have no basis to react, we may still believe them and then start having emotional reactions. Report an error

11:29 If I were to say this, I'm sure she'd say that. Oh, that really pisses me off when she does that. I can't stand that. She's terrible. And it's all made up, right? She's sitting there eating her porridge. He has no idea that I'm having these crazy ideas. So, none of these elements, the obsessive, the compulsive or the delusional aspect, are indicators of a healthy mind. Report an error

11:52 And so, as we seek to cultivate loving kindness, there's a phrase, and it may have arrived on my phone right by now, and if it doesn't, you'll still know what I'm referring to. I like it. Let me see if it's come. I sent it to myself, a little message. Report an error

12:18 Okay, but I have the beginning of it. Everybody here has flown on an airplane, I'm sure. You ever heard this movie before? Ladies and gentlemen, in the unlikely event that cabin pressure changes, oxygen mask will. You can fill in all the rest, right? Everybody knows it is. And that is put on the oxygen mask on yourself first, even if you have your own beloved child with you for whom you would happily sacrifice your life. Report an error

12:41 Don't do that. Don't put the mask on your child first. Put it on yourself first and you'll be in a much better position to help other people. But do it yourself first. We've all heard that many, many times. Report an error

12:59 It's a wonderful thing to direct our loving aspirations to the well-being of others. It's a noble thing. One more thing that's not debatable. I mean, who's going to debate that? But how capable are we, really? How capable are we, really, of serving the interests of others? In moderate degrees, here and there, definitely we have enough. We can help. But as we bring wisdom to the cultivation of loving kindness, we think not simply about helping others in their hedonic well-being. Report an error

13:33 Which is very important. I'll just keep on saying that so you know that I'm never speaking in a deprecating fashion of hedonic well-being. Because look, we're talking about health, enough food, clothing, shelter, education. These are not trivial by any perspective. So to help others in those ways certainly is important. But as we bring deeper wisdom to each of these four immeasurables, it presents us with, is that all you've got? Report an error

14:04 When you think of the good life, when you think of wishing others well, then the aspiration is, May each find happiness in the causes of happiness. That's love and kindness. So it's not cultivating positive emotions. Report an error

14:19 I've never really been interested in that, cultivating positive emotions. It's not that there's anything bad about it, but I'm kind of busy. And I'm going to be very selective in what I give my attention to. And cultivating positive emotions isn't one of them. But cultivating positive aspirations, which lead to positive, that is, meaningful intentions, you've got me hooked. Report an error

14:41 That money has absolutely counted me in, because that's going to direct the course of my life. So that money, definitely, for sure. So as we arouse an aspiration, first of all for ourselves, may I find happiness in causes of happiness. Report an error

14:58 As you well know, I'm simply not satisfied. I haven't been for a very long time to think, may I find happiness in causes of happiness, and think only of hedonic. That's just not enough. Otherwise I would have never left California when I was 20. Report an error

15:15 So we bring in greater depth, we bring in issues of meaning, of fulfillment, of satisfaction, love, really satisfying our innermost desires. And for that, when that starts to become real, and I think, again, you didn't come here for hedonic pleasures, I doubt any of you came to learn about the four measures so you can make more money, or you can get greater status and greater power. Report an error

15:36 I really don't think that's right. I don't think that happens, so I'm not going to discuss it any further. The motivation is more authentic. So as it becomes more authentic, Report an error

15:48 Well, Report an error

15:54 of course, we're not writing a list of Santa Claus. Dear Santa, please give me eudaimonia. Nobody's going to drop a sign. Not a meditation teacher, not the Dalai Lama, not the Buddha, not Jesus. Nobody's going to drop it in your lap. It doesn't work that way. It'd be kind of a shame if it did, but it doesn't, so we don't have to worry about it. Report an error

16:15 But as soon as we arrive at our aspiration, man truly experiences a very meaningful sense of well-being. Eudaimonia, genuine happiness, true human flourishing, well-being, life is more and more prominent. Report an error

16:22 Eudaimonia, that's good. But then the very next question is, how are you going to do it? What's your strategy? What are the causes? What are the causes? If you like ice cream, you know the causes of ice cream. If you like, if you really enjoy sex, we know the causes. Get a good sexual partner. Problem solved. Not an issue. But you didn't come to that, didn't come to this retreat for that. Report an error

16:45 If you did, you came to the wrong place. And so eudaimonia, now it gets interesting. Now it gets interesting. What are the causes? Is it real? Is it worthwhile? Is it meaningful? And so, in that regard, then we take that airline message. It's very good to arouse an aspiration for the people around you, for the world at large, to experience not only hedonic, enough hedonic well-being. Report an error

17:13 Enough that they're taken care of. That's enormously important. And if they're not taken care of, then we need to take care of people. If they don't have enough food, we need to do all we can. Governments, individuals, organizations. If people are hungry, well, we have to help them. Right, it's simply, if we don't have that aspiration, why do we even call ourselves civilized? We're just running around like scientists. So those basic things, when they're people, whether children, the elderly, the sick, whether they're living in a war-torn area and so forth, if they don't have enough to eat, it's just common sense, really. Report an error

17:47 Not being noble is kind of like, hey, we're on the same planet, same species, take care of each other. It's pretty simple. If they don't have shelter, we need to do clothing, do what we can, medical care, do Report an error

18:04 where it has been taken care of. And we say, okay, good, now let's get on with the meaning of life. We've handled our survival. That's good. Very important. But now that we're surviving and not really anxious about it, now what? Now what? What's this all about, being a human being? What's the potential? What is the meaning of it? What's the purpose? To say the purpose of life is survival and recreation is like farting in my face. Report an error

18:30 Really. I discuss it like that. You say, that's the meaning of life? I say, find somebody else to talk to. I'm not interested in anything else you have to say. If you're satisfied with that, And I don't mean to be insulting to such people. But if you're satisfied with that, then I have nothing to learn from you. Because you're treating me like an animal. Report an error

18:46 And there's something more to being him than Report an error

18:54 deprecating to anybody or insulting to anybody. But that answer is simply absolutely unsatisfactory. And again, you all agree, otherwise you wouldn't be here. You didn't come here to learn how to survive and procreate. Like preaching to the choir. Well, what I'd like to do now, maybe one final comment, because it was such a rich conversation. Report an error

19:16 I wouldn't think you would get done on this for last night. Report an error

19:22 This comes up a lot in positive psychology. Martin Seligman wrote a whole book on learned optimism, how to generate optimism. Think positively. Think optimistically. And so forth. What does that do? It generates positive emotion. That's what that does. I've Report an error

19:57 had a very long, rich, warm-hearted friendship with Paul Ekman, a very eminent, affective psychologist. So he's really one of the world experts on emotions. He's done like 250 scientific papers, a great deal of the cutting-edge research he's done. And he makes a very simple point here. And this is kind of a final comment to this issue of cultivating positive emotions. He said in terms of the affective range of our mental experience, the affective, there are three dimensions to it. Report an error

20:28 One is emotions. What are emotions? He said, well, emotions by nature, they're fleeting. They come and go. They don't last very long. Seconds, minutes, and then they're gone. You feel really happy for a while and then that emotion of happiness or sadness or, you know, they tend to be fleeting. Emotions as such, that's how they're defined. Report an error

20:49 They're quite fleeting. So the whole notion of cultivating positive emotions is just like things that come and go, come and go. It's like, wow, it sounds like it's been really exhausting. They keep on doing it and they keep on disappearing. Oh, it's generated another one. Oh, it's gone again. Okay, another one. And after a while you think, man, this is getting really tiresome. Because they just, by nature, they're fleeting. Report an error

21:12 So, but what about, is there anything deeper or more enduring? And the answer is, yeah, it's called a mood, hours, Report an error

21:20 as they're defining them. Mood can last for hours. You can be in a good mood and you can be anxious, you can be depressed, you can be, you know, contemptuous. You can be in a contemptuous mood. So they do last. Paul Hickman made a very interesting comment in this regard. He said, I'm very happy to have a very rich emotional life, but I really would be quite happy to have no more moods ever. Report an error

21:45 He said, and the reason for that, he's an incredibly smart man. I know him well. I think he graduated from the University of Chicago at age 18 or something. Report an error

22:01 But he said, you know, the thing about moods is they bias our perception of reality. So if you're in a good mood, you're walking around with rose-tinted glasses. Report an error

22:10 Do you really want that? Or if you're depressed, then you go walk around with brown-tinted glasses. If you're anxious, I mean, etc., etc. You're just into a mood where you're just not seeing reality in a balanced fashion. You're seeing it through a warped lens, which is warped by your Report an error

22:29 highlight some aspects which are in accordance with the mood marginalize, snuffle out obscure aspects of reality are not in accordance with the mood it really throws you out of any kind of objectivity and he as a scientist prizes objectivity Report an error

22:48 as somebody free of a messiah. then there's something beyond that. Is there anything more durable, more enduring? Report an error

23:01 it's an open debate. To my mind, it's an ended debate. I have a conviction. Scientifically speaking, it's an open debate, and for good reason. Temperament is something that may last for a whole lifetime. When I think of temperament, I think of a woman I still know. But I knew her when we were in junior high school, when I was 13, 14 years old. Her name was Cherry Green. Cherry Green. We were in school together. Report an error

23:32 She was just chipper. When I knew her as a kid, she was chipper. She just had a big smile on her face. She was cheerful. She was upbeat. Very friendly. Gregarious. And that's just how she was generally. That was her temperament at the age of 13. And then we lost touch. She went out with different colleagues. We were just buddies. We were just friends. Kind of casual friends. Through junior high school and high school. So we knew each other moderately well. She went off. She got married. Report an error

24:01 And then she met Lama Ishe. Decided Dharma was all she was really in love with. Became a nun, Tibetan Buddhist nun. Report an error

24:12 Then years later, when I was a monk in Switzerland, I heard about this. They said her name was Cher, but her monastic name was Thubten Chuta. Report an error

24:30 She's the American nun up in Washington State. FPMD, old student of Lama Zopa Rinpoche. Thubten Chuta. Thubten Chuta. Yeah, not Pema Chuta, Thubten Chuta, isn't it? Report an error

24:42 Thubten Chuta. Thubten Chuta. Yeah, so, but I've seen her since then. She still has the same temperament as people. Now she's my aunt. We're school together. But she has a temperament. And she's just very friendly, warm, gracious, upbeat, cheerful. And she has been that for her whole life. Obviously not every single day, but that's kind of her default mode. And other people are grumpy, dour, kind of depressed. Report an error

25:07 Some people are just temperamentally anxious. Some people are temperamentally hyper. Some people are temperamentally lethargic. And so one can understand why many scientists feel, well, you know, you're temperamental. You got it? You're stuck with it. Whereas I've been practicing for quite a long time and I've seen that with sustained, intelligent, diligent effort, devoting myself to a spiritual path, I know this to be true actually. Report an error

25:33 That's not to mean I can persuade anybody else, but I know this to be true, that temperament can change. Even temperament can change. You can change if you wish to. So in the midst of all of that, this cultivation of loving kindness is not about cultivating. positive emotions nor is it about cultivating positive moods is about shifting temper Shifting your baseline, your baseline, fundamental orientation to life, to yourself, to other people, shifting the baseline so there's greater open-heartedness, greater clarity of mind. Report an error

26:25 So that's why we go back to mindfulness of breathing, to elevate our baseline, a basic sanity of relaxation, stability, stillness and vividness. Our baseline of gradually attenuating this old habit, very chronic, deeply ingrained habit of obsessive, compulsive, delusional sort. It says that when we wish to, we like to sit quietly and simply be mindfully attentive, calm, relaxed, comfortable in our own skin, that that's our baseline. Report an error

27:04 That's a good baseline for eudaimonia. That's a good baseline. OCDD. Obsessive, compulsive, delusional disorder is not a good baseline for eudaimonia. It's always looking for more stimulation. It's addictive. It's fixated. More stimulation. And when there's none that's coming from outside, the mind just starts stimulating itself randomly, chaotically, and mostly unpleasantly too. Report an error

27:31 Studies have been done of rumination. 80 % unpleasant. 80 % unpleasant. So not a good baseline. For developing loving-kindness for self, and if we don't have a good baseline, a foundation, a base camp, if you like, of cultivating loving-kindness for ourselves, then exactly how well prepared are we to cultivate loving-kindness for others? Report an error

27:53 So we'll return later on to the meaning, the value, what's the point of cultivating loving-kindness? We better have a very good answer, and by good answer I mean not one that I persuade you all, but when we've listened to the teaching, when we've lectured upon it, put it into practice, Report an error

28:11 There needs to be a reason, one or more, that's really compelling to ourselves. Otherwise, when we leave here, we won't continue. Because we're rational people. We don't do things for no reason. There has to be a pretty good reason. We spend time out of our busy lives. There is greater benevolence, greater loving kindness for ourselves and others. It will be because we have a good reason. Report an error

28:31 We see the value. We say, okay, that's worth making some sacrifices. So, enough of a preamble. Please find a comfortable position. This Report an error

· · ·

30:00 is to which I will introduce you over the coming days. The central theme is balance, to cultivate a quality of attention that is present, that doesn't fall to the extremes of attentional hyperactivity or attentional deficit. Quality of attention that is relaxed, still and clear. We'll Report an error

30:34 see that such balance is perhaps even an indispensable foundation for the cultivation of loving kindness, compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity. Report an error

30:49 So with this motivation to do something really good for ourselves, To enrich our lives, to bring greater balance, greater clarity to our lives, let your awareness descend into the body, right down to the ground. Let Report an error

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32:00 your awareness permeate the field of your body, so that you're mindfully present throughout this entire field. Set Report an error

32:16 your body at ease, knowing this will not happen all of a sudden, you'll not immediately enter into a deep state of relaxation, but breath by breath, with every exhalation. Report an error

32:29 You may be able to unwind, Report an error

32:36 relaxing not only the muscles in the shoulders but softening all the muscles of the face, breathing Report an error

32:46 flow unimpededly, effortlessly, setting your mind at ease. And Report an error

33:07 it is a challenge of such practices to sustain a sense of contentment, even in the absence of stimulation, of things to do, nothing really interesting happening, to Report an error

33:28 still be content, to use the old slogan, give peace a chance. Not exciting, but Report an error

33:41 let your awareness rest in stillness. Report an error

33:52 Simply be aware of the fluctuations of this field, this somatic field, the fluctuations within the field corresponding to the in and out breath. As Report an error

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34:57 each exhalation comes to its end, make a point of not concentrating Report an error

35:11 deeply, letting go as the breath flows all the way out to the very end, being fully released. There Report an error

35:26 may be a pause. If there's a pause, let there be a pause. Perhaps Report an error

35:34 the next breath flows in immediately, in which case let it flow in immediately. Simply be present with the breath, mindful of the breath, but without preference, without regulation, letting the body breathe of its own accord, Report an error

36:06 short, deep or shallow, regular or irregular. This is the body working itself out, the body balancing its own energetic system, its nervous system if you like, by way of the respiration. See whether what I'm saying is true or not. Don't take it just at my heart. Report an error

36:32 Establishing its own dynamic by way of the respiration. Report an error

· · ·

38:36 This genuine well-being is not dependent on stigma. Report an error

38:45 It comes from a deeper place. Immediately Report an error

38:51 arises bliss. Report an error

38:56 The first sign is simply a sense of calm or Report an error

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42:57 greater clarity. Rather, the emphasis is on relaxation without losing the clarity. That's enough for now. The Report an error

43:28 sensations correlated with the in and out breath throughout the entire body. But Report an error

43:39 we also have this second faculty, introspective faculty, and a cognitive faculty, by which we are able to monitor, recognizing whether our attention has been carried away. by some distracting thought, whether the attentions grown vague, nebulous, fall into dullness. Report an error

44:11 I Report an error

44:21 don't know what it's Report an error

· · ·

55:39 like to be engaging in a conversation with someone or engaging in any way with another person or group of people when our minds are really agitated. We know what it's like. It's not foreign to us. Our minds are filled with our own thoughts, our hopes, fears, anxiety, our wants. We have expectations about the other person. Report an error

55:57 A friend of mine recently went for a job interview. She really wanted the job. So imagine all the thoughts going through her mind as she's really hoping to make a favorable impression and get the job that she was hoping. So as she's attending to the person who's giving the interview, who will decide her fate. That's what it feels like. This person holds my fate in his hands. Report an error

56:19 When Report an error

56:24 the thoughts coming up, just flooding, flooding the mind, maybe even keeping you up the night before. Report an error

56:37 blizzard of your own thoughts. difficult. so, simple practice here, it is really, really simple. It doesn't get more complex. Report an error

56:49 of nuance here and there, not a complex practice. like taking a snow globe, a snow globe that's all shaken up and it's just a flurry of activity, and trying to look at somebody through the snow globe. you're seeing mostly snow. Report an error

57:03 that person through the prism, the biases, the hopes, the moods, and so forth. Report an error

57:11 something for you, at least not against you. so getting that snow globe to settle down, all flakes of snowy stuff down, and then you can go, I can see it better. Report an error

57:25 so, these wonderful words to attend. Well, I would say, frankly, we can't attend to each other very well. insofar as the mind is just cluttered, which is a noisy train station. This flurry of thoughts, emotions, desires, anticipations, hopes, fears and so forth. It's kind of like looking through a very cloudy lens. Report an error

57:48 We're seeing mostly reflections of ourselves. Hard to see through all. So this practice is just to get the whole system settled down. How about some sanity? How about some clarity, some stillness? If you'd like to have stillness and clarity, you can. You're not always caught up in that obsessive, compulsive and often delusional flow of ideation. Report an error

58:09 So there's an enormous relevance to this simple practice here. It's like, what does that have to do with loving kindness, the sublime virtues of the heart? Well, it does. Because what we're bringing to the table, what we're bringing to this retreat, probably is a mind for which there's room for improvement, let's say, in developing these qualities of relaxation, stillness. Report an error

58:34 And that's the transparency and the clarity that we're attending with a lot of interest. So I just mentioned Paul Ekman. Again, he's done really groundbreaking work. He's probably best known for his development with a colleague of his called FACTS, Facial Action Coding System. And it's really good science. It's very, very good science. And it depended on extremely careful observation of muscle groups within the face corresponding to different emotions. Report an error

59:06 And so he's learned through training and he's taught, I think, now hundreds of people. How to attend closely to another person's face, hopefully with benevolence and not an attitude of manipulation and control or invasion, probing into the secret emotional life of another person. Well, that's simply invasive. But he is a benevolent person, and he's used this in very constructive ways. But the simple point is that we're attending to another person, but doing so in a very discerning fashion, a very careful fashion, and then picking up quite clearly with a hydrative, how do you say, good inference. Report an error

59:39 If one is well trained, you can have actually some great sound insight into the emotion the other person's experiencing. He speaks of seven. Report an error

59:49 But that's clarity, that's vividness, that we're not only attending to another person with a sense of ease, not only attending to a person with a mind that is clear and not completely muddled up with our own thoughts, expectations and so forth, but we're also attending with clarity, with discernment, with intelligence. Report an error

1:00:07 We're reading. That's very scientific there, very scientific to speak about all these muscle groups and how they correlate to these expressions of emotions. But there's a much more poetic phrase. It has to do with loving kindness and of course it can have to do with romance, romantic relationship. But drinking in another person as we attend to another person, drinking the person in, really attending closely. Report an error

1:00:35 And from that, empathy has to arise. I'm going to just go way out on a limb. Empathy has to arise. If we're really attending, not to the person as an object, attractive, unattractive, etc., etc., but attending to the person as a subject, getting a sense of what's going on in their minds, what's their emotion, what's happening there, especially when you pick up emotions, not feel empathy suggests there's a lot of repair work to be done because it's a natural response. Report an error

1:01:06 So when Report an error

1:01:12 raising issues like this that I think are quite intuitively, it's quite intuitively obvious that they are beneficial. Developing attention skills. Well, that's an easy sell. That's really an easy sell in business, athletics, education, mental health, that people's attention skills could be improved and that would be a good thing. Report an error

1:01:30 I talk about this all over the world. I never get anybody saying, no, I don't agree. I think our attention skills are just fine as they are. Not even one person has ever said that. In fact, a study was done not long ago. People were asked, are you satisfied with your level of intelligence? Just straight IQ. Report an error

1:01:48 Problem-solving ability and so forth. Are you satisfied with your level of intelligence for what you would like to accomplish in your life? Or would you really wish you were smart? The great majority of people are quite content with the level of intelligence. For what I want to do? Yeah, I would say I am. I know there are a lot more smarter people than I am. Report an error

1:02:06 But for what I wish to do in this life? Yeah, I got enough. I'm okay. I don't need to be somebody else. But then the same people were asked, and now how about your attention skills? How are you content with your ability to sustain? So when Report an error

1:02:26 we see something valuable like this, developing attention skills, empathy, love and kindness, compassion, quite obvious these are valuable. The response in our modern world, everywhere, Singapore, New York City, Germany, Berlin, Buenos Aires and so on, a very, very common response is, that's good. Report an error

1:02:50 So now where's the shortcut? Make it snappy, I'm really busy here. I'm really busy. So I'm going to develop some skills. That mindfulness sounds really good. I've heard about that. I'd like more of that, please. And empathy, yeah, definitely. I want to be with my wife, family and so forth, and colleagues. Report an error

1:03:07 I want to be, yeah, that's good. I want that. So, okay, now tell me. But make it snappy, you know, because I'm very, very busy. People looking, okay, where's the technology that's going to help? Do you have some kind of a supplement, vitamin supplement? Maybe there's a drug. Get the pharmaceutical industry on this. You know, make it snappy. I want to take a pill. Report an error

1:03:26 Because I just swallow and I'm finished. I'm going to get on with the things I really value. Because when people say I'm really busy, I'm too busy to meditate, a lot of people say that. So often, how many times have I heard this one? The yogis in Tibet, they could spend years and years and years doing that. But we in the modern world, we don't have time for that. Report an error

1:03:45 So we need the same results, but without having to put in all that time, because frankly, it's not practical. We need to get this job done much more effectively. And therefore, so what technology do you have? What kind of drugs do you have? What kind of other interventions do you have? Give us something really high-tech, snazzy, cutting-edge. Give us something scientific. And not with those very pleasant, cute, primitive people. Report an error

1:04:08 You know, those yogis, those moths. Because they've got all the time. They have time to kill. So they can go off for years and retreat. But, you know, we're busy. I've heard that. I can't even count the number. Report an error

1:04:19 And then I think of something the Chinese government did some years back. They've got a large population, a lot of people to feed. And so they got a really clever idea. They found a certain type of steroid to give to pigs. This was in Chengdu, Sichuan area. And they gave the pigs, they just injected them with these steroids, these little piglets. Report an error

1:04:40 And they inject them with this steroid and they just blow up like balloons. They grow so fast, you know, lots of fat. Pigs, they almost expect them to say, wow, this is great, you know, meat in a shorter time. Just give them those. And of course they fed them to people. Report an error

1:05:02 And then they had to kill all the people because they were poisonous. So it's the same attitude. And of course not only the Chinese have done that, who hasn't done that? The so-called developed nations, looking for the quick fix, the fast growth, something like that. But the whole question, I know I'm meandering a little bit, but I think this is actually what I'm worried about. Report an error

1:05:25 The whole notion that I'm really busy, I really don't have that much time for meditation, so make it snappy, make it effective, give me the fast track. I hear that, I hear it many, many times. And it just tells me one thing, only one thing, and that is I value meditation or the benefits of meditation somewhat. Report an error

1:05:45 Shantideva, His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. This is that simple. whoever you are, whether you're the head of Microsoft, head of Apple, you're a housewife with one child and a loving husband, everybody's busy. Everybody's busy, and everybody has the same amount of time. everybody's busy with what they value. Sometimes it's flat on survival, other times it's something else. Report an error

1:06:11 everybody's busy. beyond survival, if you're struggling just to survive, then that's just total... Totally understandable. I have nothing more to say. I hope you survive. But once your survival needs are taken care of and you're still extremely busy, then we can say, okay, that's voluntary busyness. Report an error

1:06:28 Survival's pretty, that's core. But once that's taken care of, anything beyond that is voluntary busyness, which means you're busy with what you value. And if you don't value inner transformation very much, you're not going to have much time for it. You'll look for the quick fix and be prepared to be a balloon pig. It's not going to work out. Report an error

1:06:47 Because this, the root system, these are deep issues. These are important issues. This is not like developing like a tennis backhand or learning how to play ping-pong better. There's not a little skill on the side. This kind of has to do with our existence here. And so if it's as meaningful as I'm convinced it is, then it's time to start shifting priorities and not try to fit it in with the same priorities. Report an error

1:07:15 So we return to the notes now with a very simple point here on stolen page three. This statement directly quoted from the Buddha, and that is, what a person considers and reflects upon for a long time, to that his mind will bend and incline. Report an error

1:07:35 It's a variation of 2,500 years before, 2,400 years before William James. William James' statement, for the moment, what we attend to is reality. Report an error

1:07:49 So we raise the question from last night, what's the value, not of developing positive emotions, but what's the real value of seeking to cultivate, to nurture, to sustain? Report an error

1:08:01 A sense of love and kindness. You better have a really good answer, otherwise you're not going to do it. You have too many things, too many other things to do. Well, we focus right in upon that point that it's an aspiration and not an emotion. And aspirations do tend to trigger, unless there's something to inhibit them. An aspiration comes up, a glass of water, anything, a wish for something. Report an error

1:08:23 And unless something comes up to inhibit it, chances are pretty good that it's going to trick over into an intention. An intention, of course, is an action plan. You're actually going to do something. You might aspire for something. Report an error

1:08:37 I like a portion. Report an error

1:08:43 I have no intention whatsoever of getting one. Nor do I really want anybody to give me one. But yeah, just drop out of the sky. Here's your portion. Pay the insurance. So there's aspirations, but just never rise to the level of an intention. And I have all kinds of reasons for not wanting to get a portion. And that's quite sufficient for me. Report an error

1:08:41 cars. My dad had one when like Porsche. Report an error

1:09:10 But what we attend to becomes a reality with the mind, what we, what does he say, what the person considers and reflects upon for a long time. What fills our thoughts? Here we are, awake for 16 hours a day, maybe even longer. What fills our thoughts? And if it's really very much, if the thought's overwhelming, like 95, 90%, 95%, really about our own personal concerns, living in a little goldfish bowl of irony. Report an error

1:09:40 Frankly, the downside of that, one of the many downsides, well, one of the downsides is nobody else is thinking, nobody else has that priority. I know there's nobody on the planet who's thinking about me 95 % of the time. Not even my wife. I don't want her to think that much about me. She doesn't, I'm sure. Absolutely sure. And I don't want her to, but she's not going to do it, so I don't have to worry. I have a lot of students, but they don't, and I don't want them to be thinking about my welfare 95 % of the time. Report an error

1:10:07 Good heavens, I'd be sick. So nobody is. So if I'm placing that as my top priority, then I'm on my own. Nobody else does that, nor should they. Report an error

1:10:20 But now if that's my little goldfish bowl, my desires, my hopes, my aspirations, my fears and so forth and so on, if I'm living in such a small little pool like a little goldfish bowl and a rock drops in my goldfish bowl, from inside the goldfish bowl, a big thing like a rock, like a fish-sized rock drops into your goldfish bowl, From inside it's a tsunami, catastrophe. It's spilling all over the place. This is a catastrophe. It's chaos in here. Report an error

1:10:51 I don't know what to do. I'm totally at a loss. I mean, my world is coming apart. It's catastrophic. This great big rock landed in the center of my life and I don't know what to do. Report an error

1:11:09 The world's very large and this little goldfish ball very small. And rocks are dropping in all the time. Economic, social, health, all kinds of stuff happening. So if one is interested in emotional balance, not positive emotion, but just emotional balance, not being thrown topsy-turvy into disarray, into imbalances, into kind of a bipolar oscillation, flipping out this way, flipping out that way. Report an error

1:11:33 If one wants to maintain some type of emotional resilience, balance, poise, intelligence, robustness, then this little goldfish bowl is not going to be providing a very good container for that. Because nobody's lucky all the time. And any kind of adversity is going to come up. And suddenly that's just going to engulf you in emotional balance. You'd have to be lucky all the time. Report an error

1:11:57 And nobody is. Not even the Buddha was lucky all the time. Rotten things happened to him after he achieved enlightenment. His family got wiped out. His whole clan got wiped out. That's not right. And so if one is interested in emotional balance, if that's a word again, that theme, that ideal, if that's also something that needs no defense, You don't need to give a whole lot of reasons why that would be a good idea. As opposed to being emotionally fragile, unstable, immature, you know, and so forth. Report an error

1:12:25 The hair trigger. If that's just kind of like, okay, that's obvious, let's keep on moving. Now, where are you going with that? Then, a life that is focused on I'm in mind is just going to be very unstable. Doesn't matter how clever you are. Scientific techniques you get, books you've read, drugs you're taking, and so forth. It's going to be really tough. It's going to be a tough, tough road. Report an error

1:12:47 But now consider people, there are a lot of them, and all of us are to varying extents, consider people who actually spend a significant portion of their lives thinking about the welfare of others. School teachers, for example. We remember the pilot study and then the two clinical trials for cultivating emotional balance. Report an error

1:13:06 That was more than 10 years ago. This program that Paul Ekman and I developed, 42-hour training, cultivating emotional balance. The scientists decided. that we would have women schoolteachers with a live-in significant other, but women, for statistical reasons, scientific reasons, they would all be women, they would either be married or have a live-in partner, they'd have no meditation background, and they'd come because they wanted to, to be part of this study. Report an error

1:13:32 And they got it for free, because it was a pilot study, and then that went well, and we went to a clinical trial. So this is one more anecdote, but I think again it's relevant. So I got to know a lot of teachers, because I was with three groups of teachers, and I was co-teaching with them. I got to know these teachers, pretty close to 60 of them, deeply Report an error

1:14:00 impressed that I'd never been before about school teachers. They're underpaid. Their status is way down there by your ankles. No Report an error

1:14:12 real status, no real power. Enormously important. I mean, it's hard to overestimate how important the role of school teachers is, right? Pacing your children in their hands. And so what they're doing is an enormously responsible job to take. For which they're getting really crappy pay, an enormous amount of work, and a lot of stress, and no respect at all. You're a schoolteacher. Oh, you're a neuroscientist. Report an error

1:14:38 Oh, you're a schoolteacher? I guess Report an error

1:14:46 you couldn't do anything else. You've got some job security, right? Whatever. So they don't really get much. I just found them heroic, frankly. I just found them heroic. The care, the concern, the love, dedication, because why else? I mean, they weren't pathetic. They weren't like on the streets or else that you have a job. Report an error

1:15:05 You know, these were capable women. But their love, so just, maybe I'm going on too long, but clearly the well-being of their students really was on their minds a lot. Sometimes they'd even pay for supplies when the schools are too cheap. They'd be working through the weekends grading papers and so forth. Really heroic. I'm not exaggerating anything I give away. They are really heroic. Report an error

1:15:29 They are doing such important work. And it's tough. This is in the San Francisco Bay Area, so some from Oakland, students who sometimes, their lives are being threatened. Report an error

1:15:44 So there are people, school teachers, nurses, people in social work, people, sometimes also people who are running businesses, are really benevolent, truly, deeply care about their own employees, really take looking after them, caring for them. So they're on their minds a lot. It does happen, doesn't it? They're not all bloodthirsty cutthroats. And some people have been working in government, the same thing, really. So what one finds, and then I know so many Tibetan Buddhists, Lamas and so forth, whose minds are so calm. Report an error

1:16:11 I mean, the Dalai Lama is a wonderful example. If one could have, if one is totally eclectic, ridiculously so, but if you could have some kind of clairvoyant insight to see what thoughts occupy his mind, I'll bet you there's Report an error

1:16:32 a serving of it. And so what happens out of that? If in fact what occupies your mind, your thoughts, your aspirations, even your hopes and fears, not self-centered, at least your family, make the goldfish bowl as large as you can, make it a swimming pool, make it a lake, make it an ocean, what happens? Report an error

1:16:50 It's kind of obvious, isn't it? Just analytically. If the field of your concern, those people you care about, covers a far larger range than your own individual body, and then a drop, and then two. Let's imagine the field of your awareness, of your loving concern, your care, is large like a pond rather than a goldfish bowl. Report an error

1:17:14 And that same rock, a fifth-sized rock, drops into the pond. Same rock, same water. But now what's the influence on the pond when a rock drops in the middle of the pond? Report an error

1:17:28 No tsunami. eye. It's just rock that's dropped. Yeah, I noticed. It was over there, I think. So it's a simple point. It's actually true. That the more we attend to the well-being of others, empathetically, from the heart, we're the first beneficiaries. It's true. We're the first beneficiaries. Greater emotional equilibrium, not so easily upset, thrown out of whack. Report an error

1:17:57 So that's what the Buddhist may be getting at, at least in part, when he says what a person considers and reflects upon for a long time. Is it all about our own well-being, as important as that is? But actually it's no more important than anybody else's well-being. But if we're considering and reflecting upon the well-being of those around us, then to that the mind will bend and incline. Report an error

1:18:18 And if we consider them, it just becomes more and more important. The world around us, other people's well-being, other species' well-being. It becomes more and more important to us. Why? Because we're paying attention. It's that simple. Because we're paying attention. What we attend to becomes real for us. Report an error

1:18:34 So, before we take a break, I'd like to read this passage from the Buddhist canon. A discourse, quite a famous discourse. It's a discourse, a story from the life of the Buddha. No reason to believe it's not true. It's very representative. It's from the Pāli canon, in the early records of the Buddhist teachings. Report an error

1:18:56 It's called the Kalama Sutta, the Buddha's Discourse to the Kalamas. And it highlights two points that I think are enormously relevant to our week here. So I'll read it. So when the Buddha visited the small town of Kesaputta in the kingdom of Kosala, the inhabitants known as Kalamas told him, so he's an enlightened being. Report an error

1:19:18 His renown has spread before him. And he's probably coming with a group of monks and he's visiting his village. Report an error

1:19:26 And as the word goes before him, an awakened one, a person who is said to be enlightened, a sage, one who has achieved liberation, is coming to his village. So it's kind of a big deal. So the word, I'm sure, has now received him. But these inhabitants of this village, these Kalamas, they told him they'd already heard many lectures. Report an error

1:19:46 Or Dharma talks by individuals proclaiming the truth of their own doctrines while disparaging the doctrines of others. As a result, they were filled with doubt and perplexity as to who spoke the truth and who did not. Report an error

1:19:59 Now, India is a very interesting country. I've spent years living there. But it's been interesting for a very long time. And something has been consistent for the last 2,500 years since the time of the Buddha. And that is, India has never been monolithic. It's never had a good, solid union of church and state. Report an error

1:20:16 They could impose homogeneity, orthodoxy upon its population. They were never able to do that. Later when the Muslims came in and gained conquest, they couldn't convert all those Hindus. The British came in, they couldn't get them all to be white or Christian or anything else. Just couldn't. And then within Hinduism, my goodness, the word Hinduism is a western construct. Report an error

1:20:39 It's not an Indian term at all. All these different schools. In the time of the Buddha, there was everything. There was agnosticism, atheism, monotheism, polytheism, personal God, impersonal God, you name it. There was somebody out there standing on their soapbox and proclaiming the truth and saying, I've got it figured out. Listen to me. I've got it figured out. Report an error

1:21:00 Folks, I'm going to tell you the truth. You ready? Here it is. Now, these people are wrong, by the way, but I'll tell you what's really going on because I have awakened. I know what's really going on. And so these Kalamas, they basically had it. They had one person coming after another. they had materialists back then, too. It's a whole school of materialism. The mind is just a function of the body. They didn't know anything about the brain. You don't really need to. The basic premise is Report an error

1:21:23 mind is a function of the body. If it happens to be this part, okay, whatever. But still, when you're dead, you're totally annihilated. So here comes Gautama to this village where they basically heard it all and they thought, oh, one more guy says he's enlightened, great, just what we need. You know, just like that. Report an error

1:21:43 And so, when they accosted the Buddha in this way, said, you know, we're quite confused here, but somebody actually knows what's going on, please stand up, because, you know, you seem like just a bunch of philosophers, all of you disagreeing, cancelling each other out. To which the Buddha replied, and I think his reply is quite, perhaps even unique, among people who are identified as religious leaders, founders of religion, whether it's Muhammad, Krishna, Jesus, Abraham, Moses, Report an error

1:22:14 You can look around to see whether you see this replicated elsewhere. Not to say it's better necessarily, but it's different. Here's what he said. Yes, Kalamas, when he said they're filled with doubt and perplexity about who spoke the truth and who did not, he said, yes, Kalamas, it is proper that you have doubt, that you have perplexity, for a doubt has arisen in a matter which is doubtful. Report an error

1:22:33 In other words, good. Your response is a reality-based response. Now look, you Kalamas, do not be led by reports. In other words, don't believe just something because somebody said so. Or tradition. Oh, this is an old Vedic tradition, or old, for that matter, Buddhist tradition. Or the scientists say. Report an error

1:22:52 Or don't rely, don't rely, don't be led by simply hearsay. But, you know, everybody says this. I mean, it must be true. I mean, other people say it. I mean, wouldn't they know what they're talking about? Don't be led by reports, tradition or hearsay. Be not led by this authority of religious texts. Well, that's a, that's a supply. There are a lot of religious texts. Report an error

1:23:11 Upanishads. Puranas, Dheras, and so forth, you know. Don't rely on something simply because it's an ancient text. They differ. They contradict you. Nor by mere logical inference. Don't rely on logic inference alone. Consider. I've said it. Every time you start debating, you always start with axioms. You never start without axioms. Love excluded men, for example. Report an error

1:23:45 You start with something that you don't know, but you say, well, I have to start somewhere. I'm going to assume that it's the law of the excluded middle. You can't say that he's a monk and he's not a monk. Report an error

1:24:00 Some basic things. And that's just primary, but they're in debates. I mean, there are a number of them. But then what's your starting point? The law of the excluded middle? That's pretty common. But then when you start going into more nuance, into more texture, starting points. I mean, how about this one? Report an error

1:24:19 Daniel Dennett? He thinks that subjective experience doesn't exist. It can be ignored. You can write a book called Consciousness Explained and never explain consciousness because you don't acknowledge that it really exists. It's simply brain function. That's all that really exists. So he's not irrational. He's highly intelligent, respected by many scientists and philosophers. But John Searle, on the other hand, says first-person experience is ontologically irreducible. Report an error

1:24:43 You will miss something if you ignore first-person experience and focus only on brain activity. Well, one says it is reducible. There's really nothing going on apart from brain activity. Therefore, there's nothing to be explained in consciousness. It's just a function of the brain. And the other one says, no, no, no. No, I mean, as Thomas Nagel said, what's it like to be a bat? Another philosopher, what's it like to be a bat? Report an error

1:25:06 You know, how would it be like to navigate with summa? What would that feel like? And Shantideva says, yeah, that's what I'm getting at. You can study the brain as much as you like, but you won't know what it's like to be a bat, unless you're a bat. Report an error

1:25:18 You won't know the taste of chocolate by knowing its chemical analysis. You have to actually put it in your mouth. And then there's something there that you'll not know by studying brain function or the chemical composition of chocolate. There's something else. It's called the taste of chocolate. It's called qualia. And Daniel Daniel, we know you don't need to deal with that. There's no such thing as qualia. So that's pretty basic, isn't it? Report an error

1:25:37 Are qualia, first-person experience, important? You can debate. But since they fundamentally disagree on that, and these are two highly intelligent people. Report an error

1:25:45 I've debated with them and I've read them fairly extensively. There's no question they're very intelligent and knowledgeable, for sure. But they're never going to reconcile. Are they not? Not without changing their fundamental premise. Well, that's everywhere. I just gave one example. So he said, don't rely on logic alone, because the logic is based on actions that you haven't ascertained. Report an error

1:26:11 So it's been pretty tough here. Report an error

1:26:15 Nor should you be led by considering appearances, just the empirical evidence alone. Well, empirical evidence is all very well, but sometimes do the appearances themselves mislead? Report an error

1:26:26 When you look into a mirror, when you're standing six feet in front of a mirror and you look at your own reflection in the mirror, you're seeing something that's 12 feet away, and you can photograph that. Report an error

1:26:37 Is there something 12 feet away as you look into the mirror? It certainly seems to be. The lens on the canvas says it's 12 feet away. You can take a photo and there it is, crystal clear, sharp focus. But there's nothing there. It's a reflection. And it is 12 feet away. Except it's not. It looks like it. You can photograph it. Report an error

1:26:58 But there's nothing there at all corresponding to that reflection. If you went behind the mirror, six feet behind the mirror and looked, you see a reflection from inside? So appearances can be misleading. There's no question about it. So don't just rely on appearances. They can mislead you as much as logic. But now, gosh, you're not leaving us with much here. Report an error

1:27:17 Not reports, not tradition, not hearsay, not religious texts, not inference and not appearances, nor by delight in speculative opinions. I was just interviewed extensively by one fellow that is persuaded, his own view. He interviewed me, asked me for an extensive interview, a lot of questions. I went back and forth, spent a lot of time. But as the so-called interview went on, it was clear that he was absolutely committed to his own view and basically wanted to refute mine. Report an error

1:27:49 And his view is panpsychism, panpsychism, that the whole world is conscious. So in other words, conscious doesn't emerge from complex configurations of this or that. It's just ubiquitous, which would imply that every molecule, if you really follow logic, then that would be every molecule is conscious, every cell is conscious, every neuron. Report an error

1:28:09 I've heard 100 billion to 900 billion neurons in the brain. Which one's right? Report an error

1:28:18 I'm just going to hold on to the 200 billion. So it was something between 100 billion and 900 billion. That's good. So now I have somebody who actually knows what she's talking about. So 200 billion. Well, I've heard a Columbia neuroscientist say, a good one, I mean a reputable one, Columbia University. Report an error

1:28:32 She said every neuron in the brain knows where it is. Well, either that's poetry or show me the evidence. Show me the evidence that that each neuron, 200 billion sentient beings inside your head, that's a lot of beings in there. Is there any evidence for that? Report an error

1:28:56 Compelling evidence that each one has its own discrete consciousness that has a perspective, is experiencing its environment, experiencing all the connections. It may be true, but I don't see any evidence for it at all. But the point here being that in panpsychism they say, well, not only neurons, but actually the molecules of which they're made, they are conscious. And then if you follow the logic, it's right down to elementary particles. Report an error

1:29:19 And so he's very convinced of this. And so I wrote, I just commented in one of my... is one of many views out there but number one, there's no evidence that molecules are conscious they have their own discrete perspective And then you have something called the binding problem and that is if you have 200 billion neurons in your head, Report an error

1:30:17 200 billion or 100 billion or a million perspectives, depending on, you know, how much. It's called the binding problem. There's no coherent solution I've ever heard to that problem. So it's a speculative opinion. It doesn't mean it's false. It just means it's a speculative opinion and they have no way of testing it either. Report an error

1:30:33 Whoops. So it's not even a scientific theory. But the tenacity with which this fellow clung to his position, I found quite, whoa, you really like that position, don't you? No way of testing it, no evidence and no logic to it, but you certainly like it. So that's actually very common. Not only in... When somebody gives you a question, so Claudio, do you accept that all impermanent phenomena are conditioned? Report an error

1:31:14 And he will say, duh, if he's affirming. Actually, are all conditioned phenomena by nature impermanent. And if we're debating, then he would say, if he knows his Buddhism, he would say, which the real indication is, I affirm that, what you just said. Yes, I affirm. All conditioned phenomena are by nature impermanent. But what he actually said, I desire. I desire it. Report an error

1:31:42 That's what he actually said. We believe what we want to believe. Report an error

1:31:52 It's not just whimsy, but desire is definitely not. So, So the Buddha is kind of really giving us not much shift here. Don't be led by simply your delight in speculative opinions. My idea, nor by seeming possibility that could be true, I think it is true, I like the idea a lot, or nor by the idea this is our teacher. Report an error

1:32:16 The Buddha said, therefore it must be true. Jesus said, Dalai Lama said, anybody said. That's very easy to do. It's a very easy and very comfortable way to... To, how do you say, give away any personal responsibility. I believe because my teacher says so. And look, my teacher is, ta-da! I'm just going along with what he said. Report an error

1:32:36 Count me in. What more do I believe? Oh, I believe that. Okay, I believe that. Thank you for telling me that. Report an error

1:32:47 You just believe it. So I heard a neuroscientist in Germany some years ago. She said, quite interesting the way she phrased it. She said, I'm a neuroscientist, therefore I believe the mind is the brain. She actually said that. I'm a neuroscientist, therefore I believe the mind is the brain. In other words, I belong to a certain guild, and if you want membership in that guild, this is what you have to believe. So we talked about it, we debated it. Benevolent and cordial. Report an error

1:33:15 There's Report an error

1:33:23 hopes, fears, expectations, and so forth. They have no physical qualities at all. If you look at them, they have just no mass, no spin, no location, no momentum, no velocity, no charge. I mean, they have no physical properties at all, and you cannot measure them physically. And yet, we really say that your thoughts, your aspirations, hopes and fears have no influence on your behavior. Report an error

1:33:45 I really, I'm going to really say that. And she said, well, I cannot imagine how a non-physical mind could influence the brain. Therefore, I affirm that it does not. Report an error

1:33:58 I cannot imagine, therefore it doesn't. That's interesting. I've studied physics, kind of extensively, and there's no mechanical explanation for how electromagnetic fields interface with matter. We've known that ever since 1865, at least one man did, James Clerk Maxwell. Report an error

1:34:19 An electromagnetic field is a mathematical abstraction. If you try to visualize it, you're wrong. Whatever you come up with is wrong. But it is also right that electromagnetic fields do influence matter, and matter influences electromagnetic fields. But there's no mechanical explanation for them, let alone mechanical explanation for the activities, the causal interactions in the quantum field. Report an error

1:34:42 But because this neuroscientist wasn't trained in 20th century physics, or even late 19th century physics, if you couldn't imagine it, she assumed it wasn't true. Report an error

1:34:52 That's an opinion. It's a very small box to live in. So where does it go from this? My teacher, my teacher, my professor, my department, my university, the Society for Neuroscience, or for whatever it is, my Buddhist church, my Buddhist sect, my Buddhist Lama, my Hindu Swami. It happens everywhere. It's so easy. It's kind of default mode. If in doubt, go with the flow. Go with the authorities. All of those above, that's not my way. Report an error

1:35:27 So, boy, that was a long list. And finally, my teacher. But, O Kalamas, when you know for yourselves that certain things are unwholesome, wrong and bad, then give them up. And when you know for yourselves that certain things are wholesome, virtuous, the word akkusala is also non-virtuous, and kusala is virtuous. When you know for yourself that certain things are virtuous and good, then accept them and follow them. Report an error

1:35:53 But now he's saying, he was able to say that without relying upon Any of the things he just said, don't rely on, tradition, hearsay, religious texts and so forth and so on. And that is, I think what he's getting at here is we're all full participants. We are thrown into reality, here we are, we're embodied, we have minds, we're socially engaged and we are acting. We're not rocks sitting on a stump. Report an error

1:36:18 We're acting, we're engaged, we're influencing the environment around us. Our actions are influencing our own well-being. I mean, here we are, we're full-blown players, we're on the field. We're on the field, we're already in action right now, and we can review, we can assess our own actions and the consequences of our actions, and we can see for ourselves, without reliance upon some external authority or logic and all that kind of business alone, we can assess for ourselves that if we engage, if we mentally are active, verbally active, physically active in certain ways, that the results are benevolent, they're helpful, they're beneficial. Report an error

1:36:54 beneficial, conducive to our own and other's well-being, hedonic and perhaps even eudaimonic. And that was his unwholesome, harmful, detrimental, undermining our own and others hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Well then stop it. So he goes, total pragmatism here, with no reference to reincarnation, karma or any aspect of Buddha's worldview. So that's quite remarkable. I've not seen that anywhere else. Report an error

1:37:35 He's throwing them right back on their own resources, right back on their own intelligence, their own moral sense of assessing what are the consequences of your deeds and be careful. And then he continued. He goes deeper. I think he took Iter Kuam very seriously. Report an error

1:37:51 He said the Buddha continued in that discourse to discuss the disadvantages of craving, hatred and delusion. These are called the three mental poisons. I'll talk about those later. But I think kind of on the surface you probably see those are not good. Craving, hatred and delusion. What are the disadvantages? Report an error

1:38:09 How do they disrupt the equilibrium of the mind? How do they foul our speech? How do they influence our behavior in ways that are detrimental? So he discussed that. And he discussed the merits of overcoming those mental afflictions, creating hatred and delusion, resulting in ethical conduct, you know what that means, non-injurious, benevolent, resulting in avoiding killing, stealing, adultery and lying. Report an error

1:38:32 That sounds good. That's a pretty common list that a lot of people would accept as vices. And then how this directly relates to our theme for this week. He then discussed the cultivation of the four measures. Report an error

1:38:48 And this is what he said. With his, so this is, again, we have to have a, in English we have to have a gender-specific third-person pronouns with a his. Say her if you like. With his heart thus unhostile, and that is seeing that you've really calmed the mind, calmed the mind, subdued the mind of these afflicted tendencies of hostility, ill will, and so forth. Report an error

1:39:11 Because these are diametrically opposed to love and kindness. With his heart thus unhostile. and unafflicted by ill will thus undefiled and unified so there it is that composure collectedness of attention relaxed, stable and clear with a mind that's undefiled unpolluted, uncontaminated by the toxins of the mind unified a noble disciple here and now Now what he's referring to, and you can see this if you see the whole sūtra, for a person who has calmed the afflictions of the mind and has actively devoted him or herself to the cultivation of loving kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity. Report an error

1:39:52 He said, for such a person, he thinks if there is another world, and what he's getting at is, if there is an afterlife, if there's something following my own death, if so, if there's another world. And there is fruit and ripening of actions well done and ill done. So call it karma, call it as you sow, so shall you reap. But if there are consequences of my behavior that manifest beyond death, if that's the case, that there is an afterlife, one or more, and if what I'm doing now is relevant to how things play out after I'm dead, if that's true, saying only if it's true, then it is possible that upon... Report an error

1:40:36 This is the first comfort acquired, he said. You have that kind of serenity. If that's the case... there's no ripening, fruit or ripening of actions well done and ill done. In other words, no personal consequences for you of whatever you've done in this life after you're dead. It's other people's problem. If that's the case... Report an error

1:41:32 Then here and now in this life I shall be free from hostility, affliction and anxiety and I shall live happily. In other words, this is Pascal's wager about 1,500 years before Pascal. Report an error

1:41:43 Pascal's wager, right? If there's a God, acting in accordance, turns out well. If there's no God, acting in accordance with virtue, still turns out well. Good bet. This is Buddha, centuries and centuries before Pascal, saying, look, there it is. This is going to be good no matter what. In other words, you can venture into, devote your life to the cultivation of loving kindness and so on with confidence because whatever turns out to be true, and sooner or later hopefully we'll know, this is going to be a good bet. Report an error

1:42:12 This will not be a cause of regret or disappointment later on. So he said this is the second comfort acquired. If evil befalls one who does evil, then since I have no evil thoughts of anyone, how shall evil deeds bring suffering to me doing no evil? In other words, you have that clear conscience. A sense of ease, a sense of inner well-being, tranquility. This is the third comfort acquired. And then finally, but if no evil befalls one who does evil, then I know myself to be pure in this life. Report an error

1:42:41 On both those counts, this is the fourth comfort acquired. So you see how this segues then to the rest of what we'll do for this week. That kind of just, that's right there, that concludes introductory comments, to going into the real core themes, beginning with loving kindness and moving on. Report an error

1:43:02 So, and we'll take a break now, but two minutes, which is final comment, something that actually I take rather seriously, and that is, I have an enormous amount of confidence at this point, for many, many reasons, study, meditation, reflection, investigation, that to my mind, the evidence, just my perspective, the evidence is overwhelming that consciousness is not simply a function of the brain, it doesn't get snuffed out, as much as one might wish it would, at death. Report an error

1:43:31 That's just my perspective, that's all I'm saying. So if I'm correct in that, that there's going to be some continuity of experience when my brain shuts down, irreversibly, then if there's continuity, then I will know about it. And so I'll be able to say, good call, retrospective, good call. So you're able to plan ahead a little bit. Whereas if the materialists are right, Report an error

1:44:06 supervise independence upon the brain, or equivalent of the brain, or function of the brain, if they're right. Report an error

1:44:17 never know. dead, they'll be dead at the door now. They'll never know they're alive. they'll be hopping, hopping, hopping, and then bah! Report an error

1:44:28 never have the satisfaction of knowing. Report an error

1:44:34 only chance they have of knowing anything is knowing they were wrong. Report an error

1:44:44 And so everybody winds up, none the wiser for the materialist side. If they ever find a way of testing their hypothesis, I'm going to be all ears. But so far, it's just a belief. Report an error

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1:46:29 So we'll go directly to meditation after a very short preface in the same spirit of put the oxygen mask on yourself before you try to help anybody else. Try doing what we can to create some sense of inner well-being, sense of serenity, of presence, of calm. Good platform for developing love and kindness for others. It's hard. It's hard to be deeply concerned for others when you're pretty miserable yourself. And so in this sequence, you've seen the first balancing act, as we've done for a couple of sessions now. Report an error

1:47:06 That is this big emphasis on just releasing, relaxing, setting body and mind at ease. But not just taking a nap, not spacing out. You don't need to come here to learn that. Everybody needs to rest, daydream, space out and take a nap. So no one's right to need it. But this balance of relaxing deeply, deeply, deeply and yet not losing the clarity, that's a skill. So that's not so commonly taught. Report an error

1:47:29 But let's not stay there because we're here for a relatively short time together. And so we move on to the next phase here in this developing of attentional balance which will then serve as well for everything else we do. I mean literally everything, including falling asleep. And that is the next movement here. Report an error

1:47:46 would be to, along this sequence of relaxation, stability and vividness, moving more to the stability. And the stability is, on the one hand, it's stillness, but sometimes we may be mentally active, really doing something with the mind. But if we can do so without fragmentation, distraction, losing our attention and so forth, without distraction and forgetfulness, then that ability to maintain a line of thought, a continuity of attention over time, that's not hijacked. Report an error

1:48:16 By forgetfulness or distraction, that we're just going to give one term, stability. Just a short term, stability. So it's not just stillness, but it's stability. So that, for example, probably this afternoon, we'll start to move into a meditation explicitly for the cultivation of love and kindness. Well, that's not just being still, just being quiet. Report an error

1:48:36 No, we'll actively use the mind, the imagination and so forth. But if stability is there... that attentional quality of stability, then this means an ongoing temporal coherence. And that is we can sustain the meditation, maintain focus as we're arousing one thought, one perspective, and so forth and so on. Report an error

1:48:59 Now there have been a lot of studies of this. Many aspects of attention have been studied. Extensively over the last century, and one of the major findings is that especially in occupations or activities where a high degree of attention, attentional focus is needed and needs to be sustained, air traffic controllers, jet fighter pilots, professional chess players and many others, what's been found quite uniformly is that when people do sustain that level of kind of elevated, aroused attention and they sustain it. Report an error

1:49:34 That it does tend to bring a lot of stress. And the longer you do it, the more stressed out you get. So a jet fighter pilot who's been in the cockpit for five hours, then they need like 24 hours to overcome the damage they've done to themselves. Shooting pool, watching television, drinking beer and so forth. R &R. And then you're ready to get back in the cockpit and then burn yourself out again. But we also know that just driving in heavy traffic or just in the work, sometimes the workplace is really stressful just because of bearing down. Report an error

1:50:07 So, there was no surprises there. Now, it may come as a surprise. I've meditated something like 40,000 hours or so, but more importantly, I know, well, that's important. But again, I've lived with and I've gotten to know yogis far, far more experienced than I. And there's just a commonplace observation among experienced meditators. Report an error

1:50:26 I mean, really professional great people who have really done this for years. And that is, they may be able to spend I'll speak first, this is not a big deal, but I did a six-month solitary retreat last year and I was meditating on the average 12 hours a day. That's what people do when you're taking it seriously, 12 hours a day, six months. Report an error

1:50:44 But never once at the end of the day did I feel stressed out. Now that's not speaking of some high accomplishment, I just know how to meditate. And what does that mean? You learn how to maintain continuity without seizing up. So here's the next balancing point. You maintain the continuity, the stability, the ongoing coherence of your attention. Report an error

1:51:02 Thank you for listening. the underlying sense of ease, of relaxation, of looseness. that's a skill. First, learn how to be loose in the first place, without spacing out and falling asleep. But now, once you've developed that skill, an ongoing sense of ease and you're not losing clarity, good. Now, move into second gear. Report an error

1:51:21 Now, greater continuity. Really start maintaining focus, with some degree of effort. as you really are maintaining that that focus, focus. Report an error

1:51:31 Don't start to seize up. Don't lose the sense of relaxation you've already cultivated. So previously it was relaxed more and more deeply without leaving clarity. Now develop stability without losing the underlying relaxation. That's a skill. Because what comes naturally when I say, really pay attention, I've got something really important to tell you, and we go, you know, we seize up. Report an error

1:51:56 Okay, and maybe we can do this. Okay, I'm concentrating. That's Report an error

1:52:03 not what yogis do. Otherwise they're going to be burned out in five hours. And if they continue, they're going to be more stressed out, more heavy, more dysfunctional. The longer they meditate, the worse off they'll be. Report an error

1:52:15 For the same reason the jet fighter pilot. Keep them in the cockpit for an hour and you'll go crazy. So that's a skill worth cultivating, isn't it? To be able to maintain focus, whether it's a conversation, taking care of your children, driving a car, you name it. And also when you want to fall asleep and not have your mind just keeping you awake, awake, awake because it's out of control. Report an error

1:52:36 Stable. Right now I'd like to fall asleep and be quiet. I actually can't fall asleep. So this would be good for every activity during the daytime. It's also going to be good for falling asleep. And money can't buy it. And drugs won't do it. Drugs will do all kinds of things. It'll knock you out. And it can also make you hyper. Tell me the drug. Maybe they'll develop it one day. But I won't be experimenting with it because I won't know the side effects and I don't trust them. Report an error

1:53:04 But so far I don't think it's any drug that makes you very, very relaxed, able to sustain focus. And with no side effects, three Report an error

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1:54:06 qualities, relaxation, stillness and vigilance. Relax Report an error

1:54:37 deeply, let go of all over your respiration and allow it to settle breath by breath in its own natural rhythm, unforced, unregulated, unimpeded. This Report an error

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1:56:10 through a deliberate act to really allow yourself the freedom to release for the time being your concerns, hopes and fears about the future and the past. Give yourself the luxury of resting carefree in the present moment, in stillness. Report an error

1:56:34 awareness illuminating the somatic field in which the of the respiration. Report an error

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1:58:59 you feel that you're up in your head, that your perspective is in your attention downwards. Report an error

1:59:08 visualizing the belly imagining your torso, just focus on the tactile sensations in the abdominal. Let your Report an error

1:59:21 spine be straight if you're sitting upright, your sternum slightly lifted. Your abdominal muscles loose and relaxed, so that when you breathe in, while the air is just going down to your lungs, of course, the sensations of the breath, of the respiration, all the way down to the abdomen, which expands as you inhale and falls back as you exhale. Report an error

1:59:42 And Report an error

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2:00:55 focus your attention now at the object of mindfulness. Be these bare tactile sensations, in other words, not something you imagine or visualize. Report an error

2:01:07 By settling your awareness in a purely witnessing mode, simply be aware of, with your best approximation of bare attention, to the sensations of the expansion of the abdomen, the rise of the abdomen as the breath flows in, and the fall of the abdomen as the breath flows out. Over Report an error

2:01:33 the centuries, by directing the attention downwards, this tends to facilitate the development of attentional stability. It grounds the attention, helps to stabilize the attention. In Report an error

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2:02:48 accordance with the oscillation of the respiration, you may find it helpful to gently around, focus, concentrate your attention. As the breath flows in, the belly expands. As Report an error

2:03:05 the breath flows out, but not easing off so much that you space out, but rather to the best of your ability, maintain an ongoing flow of cognizance, of knowing throughout the entire course of the in and out breath. An ongoing cognitive engagement with these sensations at the abdomen. Report an error

2:03:29 As it rises and falls, arousing our Report an error

2:03:37 conceptual flow of knowing, that is to say, you don't have to think about it, analyze it, label it. You know the duration of each in and out breath before you say it, whether it is long or short. And Report an error

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2:06:46 with each in-breath, as you arouse the attention, Report an error

2:06:51 this tends to clear out any fogginess of mind, doors. So with each cycle of the breath, it's as if each one is a complete meditation session in itself. Report an error

2:07:04 As you release, you remedy attentional hyperactivity. And as you arise, you remedy the attentional deficit. And in this way, you balance your attention. You make it serviceable for any type of meaningful endeavor of your choice. Let's continue practicing now in silence. Too Report an error

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2:19:09 much for one morning. Any questions or observations? Yes, please. And your first name for everybody's method. Chris Popp. Thank you. Do you like to go Popp or by Chris or both? Chris. Very good. Thank you, Chris. Kirsten. Report an error

2:19:34 Walter Bacon, and we'll be going back to our station Report an error

2:19:41 No comparison, it's like a cheetah outrunning a turtle. back to what I was going to do. So, I consult them, I talk to people, I train them in skills and learning from people who have had disease in the last few months and stuff like that, and I'm trying to make sure that the meeting is successful. Report an error

2:20:08 struggling with narrowing it this. Did I hear you correctly? You're a pathologist? I don't think that was right. Yes. Consultant, that's what I did. I didn't think pathologist made much sense. Go ahead. Consultant, I'm just saying. Yes. Report an error

2:20:28 So, great programs, and I'm not really in the of it is quite good, quite an instance of, and a lot of my work is about how to respond to a little bit of privacy. Report an error

2:20:44 And I'm struggling very much with that. Mm-hmm. Report an error

2:20:53 I really, you know, feel used to more of in what we're say. I'm having a hard time understanding. I think it's partly the accent but also the blurriness of the sound. Probably so, yeah. And if you can articulate, because I really want to understand what you're saying. Report an error

2:21:15 There we are. and also with some of the stuff you see around are some of the resources. Report an error

2:21:22 So I deal with it, and I find I'm going to do the right thing, and I'm going to be more commercially successful. And you want to be successful? More commercially successful. Report an error

2:21:33 And I'm struggling to marry them to us. Some Report an error

2:21:41 of them are top, other people are bottom. So I don't know how to think about it. We're all something to be fair to us, and it will be. So there's a couple of ways it's possible. But I'm struggling with it. I don't know how to marry one kind of commercial success. And one or more of it, at least a number, so I really don't have enough money to do all that. Basically, meditating and doing Lama Tsongkhapa would be really nice. Report an error

2:22:10 But, you know, if you didn't, that would be probably in the face of us. And it's hard to get out of it again. Hard to? Hard to get out of it. Report an error

2:22:31 It's like, you don't see what I'm struggling with. It's just not coming through. Report an error

2:22:38 Yes, I think you've been very articulate and I'm happy I was able to understand. Report an error

2:22:47 Yeah, I mean, the Buddha said himself that his teachings went against the current. That's India, rural India, 25, 26 hundred years ago. He wasn't going with the flow, he wasn't going with the stream, because, you know, capitalism, under whatever name, has been around for a long time, competitiveness, marketing, the Indians were very keen, you know, trade and so forth. Report an error

2:23:10 I think it's really a matter of... Finding priorities and not coming down blockheadedly, which you haven't and I don't think I have either, is that's crass materialism, that's crass business. Whereas we holy people, we spiritual people, we did this over here. It's way too simplistic. I've never believed that. I mean, it's wonderful. Report an error

2:23:31 I've known yogis who are really, they're just like that. I mean, they're totally living in total poverty and blissful and utter simplicity and so forth. But they are extremely rare and I find them very... Inspiring to see, yes, one can live on that level and still be fully, very content and have a very rich, meaningful life. I think my first response would be that those types of, let's say, hedonic pleasure that the Buddha acknowledged are valuable. Report an error

2:24:01 And the first one is ownership. Ownership, right? And remember what that is. It's really having enough. And having enough where you feel content, you feel secure. And also, that's it, right now. Right now, where we are right now, you're getting the, the Buddha said, you're getting the kind of the joy, the pleasure of ownership. If you can feel, as I do right now, if I get sick, I'll be taken care of. Report an error

2:24:25 I have insurance and so forth. I have no problem with my wife paying the mortgage on our house. Actually, I have no financial worries at all. Report an error

2:24:36 So that's good. I feel quite content about that. But then beyond that, Alan, do you want to have one more? Would you like more? And I kind of feel rather blasé about that. But if I had more, I would like it. Sure, if somebody says, I have some more money, okay, I'm not going to turn it down. But then what's that about? Because I don't want a better house and I don't need a better car and I really am very content with what I have already. Report an error

2:25:01 Ah, that's the pleasure of wealth. Because if I have more, then I have surplus. And then I can be giving away. And that gives some pleasure too. And then if one is thinking, and I do think about this, at some point I may want to be phasing out of teaching and spending more and more time in meditation. Report an error

2:25:21 I like to die in a meditative mode and I like to have a bit of cushion so that I don't have to work to my dying day. This is work, but I love doing this. And so that also has its legitimacy. So I think it's just kind of sorting things out. It's just sorting things out. Acting as a consultant in a competitive world, wanting to make profit, wanting to make a bit more profit. If in the back of the mind there's all the sense, what's this all about? Report an error

2:25:49 What's this all about? Because so many people, you must know some people, and I know I do. I've met some incredibly wealthy people. I would absolutely, no amount of money, if I could switch positions, no amount of money would make me want to switch positions with them. The burden of the wealth, the heaviness of it, I found just nothing I ever want. So I'll just end on this note. Report an error

2:26:16 Religions, including Buddhism as a so-called religion, religions are known for centuries now for having empty rituals. Empty rituals, meaning it's just a ritual for the sake of ritual. It's empty, there's no real heart, no juice, nothing really vital about them. And that happens everywhere. It happens in Tibetan Buddhism, Theravāda, Christianity, Judaism. It's everywhere. And so we know about that. And religious people get ridiculed for that on occasion. Report an error

2:26:42 Good reason. But I would like to suggest that also there are rituals of materialism, rituals of material success, rituals of the good life that are equally devoid of any real content. And that is, if I make it some millions, maybe 10, 20 million, and I say, hey, pop, Chris. Report an error

2:27:15 And I have a 12-year-old Acura. It worked perfectly well. It's a good car. It's stable. Everything I want out of a car, I've already got. So when I'm driving the Porsche and I'm driving my 12-year-old Acura, a little hatchback, I'm actually getting any more pressure. Report an error

2:27:31 A little bit of spike here and there. I like the sound of the Porsche, but I can't sound it in my car. But it's a sound. I can get a recording of it and play it any time I want. Report an error

2:27:41 The seat, the seats, my car has bucket seats. It has good seats. I can't drive 160 miles an hour and go to jail if I try that anywhere. So what's that going to do for me? And then likewise, that's for everything else. If I'm wearing, you know, our money, isn't it? Our money suits, isn't it? Wearing a $2,000 suit. Am I going to enjoy that more than what I'm wearing now? Report an error

2:28:05 Because I'm not too hot or cold. And so if that's all for the sake of well-being, happiness, feeling this is a good life, then we say, okay, how much is this symbolic? And how much is real? What's the meaning of golden handcuffs? I've met a number of people like that. They're raking in the money and they don't even like their work. But they can't quit because then they can't pay their bills. And so they're stuck. Report an error

2:28:28 So I think if we assess this and we practice that first meditation, that would be the final thing I suggest. That first meditation we did. What's your vision of you flourishing as an individual? And it's unique to you. It's not somebody else's agenda. But when you envision drawing from your experience, you've been around for a few decades now, your vision, what really makes you happy? Report an error

2:28:48 And that's not a trivial pursuit. What really makes you happy? What is that? then arousing, I'd like to be going there. This is not trivial. I mean, great wisdom to say this is the meaning of life, starting with Socrates. Report an error

2:29:07 then considering what would you love to receive from the world, how would you love to transform greater happiness, fulfillment meaning, joy, satisfaction you're probably not a finished product otherwise you wouldn't be here how would you like to change then that the wealth For some people's wealth, it's money. Report an error

2:29:24 And they can write checks. I know a fellow, a very good friend of mine, who used to be on my board for the Santa Barbara Institute. And he's very smart, very hardworking, very creative. And he set as his criteria of the success of his life and his value as a human being for roughly 30 years or so, maybe. He Report an error

2:29:46 was 50, tens of millions. Report an error

2:29:52 By any criterion, he'd made it, because he did not start out rich, I don't think. And then he got to age 50, and he's looking at his beachside home and his home here and just everything he wants. He's got everything. And he looked at his life and said, I'm not happy. And he had a loving wife, loving family, good health, good looking guy, you know, good, fine, beautiful home. Report an error

2:30:15 I've been to his home a number of times. Everything was good and he wasn't happy. I should be, I'm 50 years old now and I've succeeded beyond my wildest dreams, or at least I've certainly fulfilled my dream. Report an error

2:30:27 I just wasn't happy. Then Report an error

2:30:32 some kind of a light bulb, I had nothing to do with it, I didn't know him then, but some light bulb went on and I said, ah, I've got wealth. I can do things with this wealth I really enjoy. Report an error

2:30:42 let's give it away. And he said, from that point on, then I really started to enjoy life. And he's still good at making money. He's still alive and he keeps on making money because he's good at it. And he just makes more money and he gives more away. And he's really getting a kick out of it. He now loves his life. He really enjoys his life. Report an error

2:30:47 microeconomics, microloans, and so forth, helping. Report an error

2:31:12 And his interest in meditation never quite got around to it. He really likes me a lot and likes what I'm doing. Curious, but never quite got around to it. And he's not religious, but he's open. But he's going to die happy. But it's not because of how much wealth he has, but how much good he was able to do. Report an error

2:31:36 Yes, please. Report an error

2:31:41 No, you're Alan. And you are, please tell me your name. Two guys with gray hair and glasses. What a man he is. Your name again? Report an error

2:31:57 Yeah, your hair's not quite as gray as his. Chris, Report an error

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2:32:36 thank you. Yes, two Chris's. If you can articulate really clearly, because I really want to understand. Report an error

2:32:48 For the four questions? Understood. Report an error

2:33:02 I missed that. Report an error

2:33:17 Microphone a bit farther away. Better. the struggle that you've been through. Report an error

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2:33:31 Christ's name, amen. Report an error

2:33:39 really struggle about getting right in terms of, I think I belong to the school. Report an error

2:33:48 Yeah. Report an error

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2:34:27 would serve in this Report an error

2:34:44 I am Report an error

2:34:55 also aware of the shame research and the authenticity research Report an error

2:35:05 about the idea of the most mysterious, the most profound, emotional and most difficult to tell at all, joy, even more than rage and sadness. And she is the example of looking at what will happen in some way. Report an error

2:35:35 like that, so it's almost like a skinny little... Report an error

2:35:42 Yeah, Report an error

2:36:01 that last point, that could be a whole day right there relating to the Brahmavihāra. That's what we happily do. to full joy. think I've got it. How do we proceed to that issue, and how do we aim for increasing our capacity to pass our conscious and emotional limits with regard to the brotherhood of the heart? Report an error

2:36:08 Several more days to go. Report an error

2:36:14 There was a movie done quite a number of years ago. I think it was at, I can see the actor. And it was some youngish people in their late 20s or so. Report an error

2:36:25 Kevin Bacon, I think was his name. Kevin Bacon, his face is in my mind. And they found some, it was science fiction. And they found a way of stimulating the brain where you just get blissed out. And then they started doing it in the morning. I think it was Kevin Bacon. Bonkers. Anybody see that? Long time. Altered states? Maybe. Report an error

2:36:44 But it was kind of just hitting the pleasure spot. I don't know how much good science was behind it, but that's not really the point here. That's not what I'm getting at. Imagine just being over the top, out of your mind, teeth chattering, blissed out all the time. I wouldn't want that. It Report an error

2:37:04 sounds like a psychosis to me. I'm Report an error

2:37:13 going to go straight to Buddhism, because you have some background in Buddhism. So why not? Because we're going to be going more deeply into Buddhism here. Get some idea of Buddhist worldview, Buddhist understanding of these different qualities? Why not? It's what you're for. Report an error

2:37:32 It's said that a Buddha simultaneously experiences, it's called the immutable bliss of nirvāṇa. And that is the culmination, one can say, of this yudhamaniya. It's immutable, that is not arising independence upon, it doesn't fluctuate. When your mind is immersed in this non-dual realization of nirvāṇa, ultimate reality, there's a bliss that comes with that. Report an error

2:37:59 And the Buddha spoke about it quite extensively. I have a long quote by him, sent to me by Bhikkhu Bodhi, the outstanding Theravāda scholar. Why did he praise it? It really, I mean, he just went from one attitude to another, to another, about the nature of this bliss of nirvāṇa. Really quite amazing. But the Buddha's awareness, the Buddha's awareness, and I'm now speaking from Mahāyāna perspective, the Buddha's awareness on the one hand never is parted from this bliss of nirvāṇa, which literally does transcend our imagination. Report an error

2:38:33 But he indicates it's something ultimately good. That bliss is something ultimately good. It is the fulfillment of your innermost heart's desire, on the one hand. On the other hand, especially most explicitly in the Mahāyāna tradition, and I'm coming from that perspective, the Buddha simultaneously wears the suffering of us. Report an error

2:38:56 When you said there's nothing so unbearable as joy, I've had long, long conversations with Bali Yatso by autobiography of a monk. But what was it? 33 years, I think it was, in concentration camp. Tortured. Starved. Tortured more. More tortured. Starved. Tortured. Work. Starved. Tortured. So actually I think there is something more unbearable than joy. Knowing that somebody is coming to you on a regular basis and they want to inflict upon you the maximum amount of pain that they can without killing you. Report an error

2:39:35 He looked into his torturous eyes one day, never knowing, of course, whether you'd ever get out. That's the thing about being in a concentration camp. They can kill you any day they like and nobody will know. They can let you out any time they like but they can never let you out and you have no idea. You are helpless. You will be tortured whenever they want to torture you. Report an error

2:39:58 And one day he told me, because I had translated for him, it was seemingly memorable because he expanded my vision. I know it's a bit of a tension to your question but nevertheless irrelevant, I believe. He said on one occasion the torture came to him for the regular torture and they had various instruments to intense pain. Report an error

2:40:19 And Pāli Gaspar told me he couldn't take it anymore. It was just too much. A number of his fellow monks had committed suicide. They just couldn't take it anymore. It was unbearable. But he wouldn't take it. He's a Buddhist monk. A Buddhist monk has a precept not to kill, not even your own life. He took it very seriously. He didn't want to die violating his own precept. At the same time, he couldn't bear it anymore. Report an error

2:40:42 And so his torture came to him with his tools. Report an error

2:40:58 Torture came. Pāli Gaspar had figured out a strategy to be able to die and not commit suicide. And that is, the torture came, and when he came close enough, the bodhicitta spit in his face. Not out of contempt or hate or anything, but he figured, this will tip this guy. He'll be so insulted. It's a very disgusting thing to do. I'll spit in his face, and then he'll be so pissed off that he'll kill me. And the Report an error

2:41:24 torture got the spit in the face. Report an error

2:41:42 That happens from the torturing of the bodhicitta for a long time. Wounds, injuries, and so forth, the pain can be truly unimaginable for a person who doesn't have it. It would have simultaneously worked for the pain of sentient beings. Multiple realms in the Buddhist world, as you well know. But even within the human realm, we have a pretty broad bandwidth. That's about as good as hell. I mean, that's as close to hell as I've ever heard. Report an error

2:42:07 And then we have the rich and the famous, the luxuries, the sensual pleasures and so forth, doing a very good approximation of devas, right? And everything in between. Everything. So we have the whole spectrum. Part of the richness of human existence in the Buddhist view is that we can tap into the most intense anguish and pain, but also the most sublime hedonic pleasures and everything in between. Report an error

2:42:28 So when I envision, not that you should in any way emulate mine, I'm just telling you that, when I am bringing to mind, it's Report an error

2:42:40 actually not even the bliss of nirvāṇa. Because that bliss of nirvāṇa, when the arhat passes away, it's said that the arhat leaves the body, the mind, all behind and just goes into a timeless zone beyond all reckoning, which is timeless and immutable bliss. But that means complete ignorance, complete absolute unawareness of what's happening where we live. Report an error

2:43:02 And I simply cannot see that as an ideal. Report an error

2:43:08 That's almost like ignorance is bliss. I'm ignorance of saṃsāra and I'm certainly enjoying some nirvāṇa. So I got my bliss here, but tough luck, I hope you catch up. But I'm not even aware of it any longer. So that's not an ideal. The Buddha's bliss is inconceivably, simultaneously aware and never parted from the bliss of nirvāṇa and at the same time, intimately, even non-dually, aware of the suffering of sentient beings. Report an error

2:43:33 So when envisioning... The greatest good, the greatest happiness, the greatest sense of well-being. I would say the Buddha had experienced the perfection of well-being. I really would say that's a perfection of well-being. To have a heart so immeasurably open to the suffering of sentient beings and so profoundly, helplessly moved by compassion to serve the needs of sentient beings. Report an error

2:43:55 At the same time, never parted from the immutable bliss of Lama. And so, when envisioning this, if one wishes to do it, and it's very much part of Buddhism to envision not only getting away from saṃsāra, but what are you moving towards? What is your aspiration? What is your heart's desire? What is your vision of freedom? What is your vision of awakening, of enlightenment? Report an error

2:44:18 That is not an emotion. And that's really core. It's not an emotion. I don't want to have the same emotion all the time. Not even bliss. Because if I'm experiencing bliss, and then Chris Popp over here is really in anger. He's just injured his knee and he's like, he's popped out. And I'm just, that's just weird. That's just weird. Report an error

2:44:38 I can't feel any empathy for him because I'm just kind of sizzling in my own bliss. I don't want that. So it's got to be something with wisdom. It's got to be something with depth and there's not an emotion. Something that is truly a being well. And envisioning that I think is a very useful technique. Report an error

2:44:56 And there shouldn't be a struggle. There should be a celebration. Report an error

2:45:03 you speak about practice of meditation. Report an error

2:45:18 It's a show. Report an error

2:45:43 consider it as non-subject and you decide a that doesn't work I don't know where you're talking to that right now but I'm wondering if they consider a To give a Report an error

2:46:03 short answer, it's now time for lunch, I reckon. This is a very rich topic, deserving a lot of deep reflection. I know you've already given it. But it's quite true. The culmination of the path in this Buddha's understanding is called non-abiding nirvāṇa. That is, the Buddha is not immersed in nirvāṇa, to the exclusion of saṃsāra, but not mucking about in saṃsāra as we are, who have no access to nirvāṇa. Report an error

2:46:29 Neither absorbed into either one. And as you pointed out, even along the path we can create facsimiles of that. That is, when you go into shamatha, the deeper you go into shamatha, of your ordinary mind into this underlying substrate consciousness characterized by bliss, luminosity and silence or non-conceptuality. Report an error

2:46:51 It's your own little facsimile of nirvāṇa. It's not nirvāṇa, but definitely in the right direction, right? Whereas when one ventures out into the world, when one is going out into the world where there's an awful lot of suffering. And so when you'd be doing these two, now, ultimately they'd be non-dual. But as long as they're not dual, This oscillation, this going out into the world and engaging, and then having time to inhale and coming into solitude, and then having time for exhalation and coming out into the world. Report an error

2:47:22 And it looks like, okay, this is for my sake and this is for your sake. But when one goes deeper into it, you're actually going in, withdrawing into solitude for some time, going into your own awareness for the sake of all sentient beings, in order to be more capable, more effective. to be of greater service. That's why you're trying. When you come out into the world, this is to actually cultivate your heart. four immeasurables cultivate bodhicitta more and more Enjoy your lunch. See you at 2 o'clock. Report an error

2:47:49 And so you're coming out for the sake of your own fulfillment and you're coming in for the sake of all sentient beings. In which case, then, you see, it's really all the peace. And there's a pretty good idea Report an error

2:48:01 your lunch. See you at 2 o 'clock. Report an error

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Talk by B. Alan Wallace. Original at Vajrayana Institute via Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/BAWFourImmeasurables. Licensed CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. Transcript generated automatically and may contain errors; the audio is the authoritative version.

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