← B. Alan Wallace

Four Immeasurables Retreat with B. Alan Wallace - Sydney 2014 (part 15)

B. Alan Wallace · 2014 · 2 h 48 min · Vajrayana Institute via Internet Archive

Download audio

Automated transcript, not yet checked by a person; report an error.

Words the recogniser was unsure of are underlined with dots. Use “Report an error” beside any passage to tell us what the teacher actually says.

Key passages

The teacher's own words, quoted from the transcript below and chosen automatically as representative.

  • 7:43

    My sense of this is, not having been a mother for some time, is that the empathy she feels when she sees her child, maybe she even sees blood, maybe it's a serious injury, the feeling that she feels, my intuition, maybe I'm wrong, is not really, there's my child over there, that child's hurting, I feel empathy for my child, I want to do something for my child, like a computer program.

  • 17:46

    There's no dualistic grasping, but there is awareness. There is awareness. Now the word for awareness in Sanskrit is vidya. Vidya. It's a rikpa in Tibetan. Vidya. But if you go to the 12 links of dependent origination, or you just go to the general teachings of the Buddha, and you say, what's the root of suffering?

  • 1:14:40

    So empathetic joy among the four immeasurables is the only one that's an emotion. It's joy. It's taking delight. And now what's the object? Well, you recall that in loving kindness and compassion, what's the object? Sentient beings. Sentient beings. Wishing for them to find happiness in the causes, but sentient beings are the object that you're attending to.

  • 1:15:03

    With compassion, you're attending to sentient beings and wishing that they may be free of suffering in its causes. But here the object is the joys, the successes. So just as they take delight, if a young person gets into a university they really apply to and are really hoping to get into, and they get in.

· · ·

0:48 A paraphrase of a remark made by the Buddha that wisdom without compassion is bondage. Compassion without wisdom is bondage. Remember that one? I'm very happy, actually, the way this retreat's turning out because it's not simply focusing on the four measurables. As rich as they are, it's on one side. It's not the wisdom teachings. We have the shamatha, as you always, but we're bringing in on a number of occasions here more of the insight teachings, the wisdom teachings. Report an error

1:13 And that's what I'd like to make a few comments about before we go into the next session. I've mentioned in the foundational teachings of the Buddha when you ask, what's the root of this pervasive existential suffering? Why are we fundamentally prone to suffering? And you may recall the answer, which to my mind makes a lot of sense actually, and that is this close grasping to or identification with my body, my mind, and then all the other stuff, my cell phone, my family, my country, my hemisphere, and so on. Report an error

1:42 It makes a lot of sense, I think. But if we ask that same question all over again, now in the Mahāyāna context, It doesn't supplant, it doesn't negate the earlier statement, but it does bring another dimension to it. And that I find repeatedly, as one first of all gets an understanding of these foundational teachings, sometimes called the Shravahayana teachings, or teachings for individual liberation. Report an error

2:08 You have that as your foundation, and then if you move into the Manayana teachings, then... Again, I've never seen this as kind of sectarian rivalry, like one school versus another, like the Baptists against the Theologians or the Protestants against Roman Catholics. One can view it that way, and I understand, but I just don't find that useful. I see the Mahayanas really rooted in, founded in, yeah, rooted in that foundation, and then going beyond the vision. Report an error

2:34 So beyond the vision of one's own individual liberation. Certainly we want to be individually liberated, but is that enough? And I've discussed that already at some length. But likewise, this one addresses the root of suffering. All right, that's good. But now can we go beyond that? Is there anything more to be said? And here's the answer from Mahāyāna perspective. Report an error

2:53 What's the root of suffering? Dualistic grasping. Dualistic grasping. Now that completely subsumes the earlier statement of this fierce kind of substantial reifying grasping onto I, me, my, my body, my mind, I and mine over here. But now let's just extend that. As soon as there's a reification, And again, I presume that word is clear, grasping onto kind of a substantial, autonomous, real entity, a reification, whether it's a cell phone, a person, or oneself. Report an error

3:23 There is the reification of I and mind, the sense that there is really someone, some entity over here that has a body, has a mind, and has some kind of an autonomous existence. But as soon as we've kind of planted a stake there, this reification of the subject, then something is inexorably going to take place after that. Report an error

3:42 And that is we just open our eyes and look at anything and there's going to be immediately a reification of that. It's a given. If you reify yourself, you will reify the other, the object. Reify the subject, you will reify the object. And we do reify the subject. It's pretty deeply ingrained. So now that as soon as we've done that, whether it's another person, so now it's an I, it could be an I-it relationship, you're over there, I'm over here. Report an error

4:06 But there's that bifurcation, so now here's one reified entity, there's another reified entity. It could be a person, but it could be a thing, any object at all. Now we have a reification also of the duality between the two. That I'm absolutely over here, you're absolutely over there. And that goes for everything. The galaxies, planets, elementary particles. Report an error

4:25 Everything is being reified as object while I'm reified as subject. And now with that, it is coming out of ignorance and then manifesting as delusion, as a Buddhist view, and it can be tested. Then out of that comes all the other mental afflictions. All the other mental afflictions. All the things I crave, whether it's intangible things like reputation or status, or whether it's tangible things like things or people that I want to control or get some gratification from and so on. Report an error

4:53 All the craving will come from that. But of course, as soon as I have craving and something gets in the way, then hostility arises, war arises, conflict, misery arises, and everything else. So everything else is now just etc., dot, dot, dot. Everything else, all of saṃsāra, all of human-created misery, all comes out of that. So we come back to that theme of dualistic grasping. And happily, there are two large approaches, large-scale approaches that are completely complementary, like yin and yang and so many other complementary themes. Report an error

5:24 of addressing and transcending or dissolving away this root of all conflict, of all misery, this dualistic grasp. One way, let's say all of the way, since we have this whole notion of heart and mind in English, Western languages, which you don't find in Tibetan, by the way, you don't find in Buddhism, but we say it, and it's not entirely devoid of meaning, the way of the heart is what we've been focusing on primarily in this retreat, and that is by attending to others. Report an error

5:54 It's just that simple, delicious word. By attending closely to others, a loved one, a family, your children, anybody, anybody who comes to mind, by attending closely to them. As sentient beings, if they're human beings, then it's human beings. By attending closely to them, they become real for us. Becoming real for us, we can't help but care about them. Report an error

6:15 And out of that empathy, out of that caring, naturally comes maybe a little bit of cultivation, loving kindness and compassion. And then when something good happens, empathetic joy, we try to make it as even as possible and then it's equanimity. And so in this way we come out of our skin, out of our little local neighborhood of I, Me, Mine, and we start attending to and embracing in our concerns, our hopes, our aspirations. Report an error

6:41 the well-being of those around us. And the idea is it's like a wave going out over an alluvial plane. It just kind of flows and flows and flows wherever there's a barrier, like not that one. We just keep on flowing until that And so in that way, when everyone becomes as real to me as I am, And everybody's joys and sorrows become as real and as important to me as my own do. Then this dualistic grasping is definitely torpedoed. Report an error

7:20 It's quite clear, isn't it, from a pragmatic perspective. If I'm caring as much about your well-being as I am mine, then the notion that I am over here and you're over there falls apart. What's coming to mind right now is if a mother, for example, is right on the spot and she sees her child fall and get maybe really injured and the child's crying. Report an error

7:41 you so much, Charles. My sense of this is, not having been a mother for some time, is that the empathy she feels when she sees her child, maybe she even sees blood, maybe it's a serious injury, the feeling that she feels, my intuition, maybe I'm wrong, is not really, there's my child over there, that child's hurting, I feel empathy for my child, I want to do something for my child, like a computer program. Report an error

8:09 My sense is that it's immediate. You see the child in pain, you see the face, you hear the cry. And my sense is it's not a matter of inference. That child is in behaving and in fashion that I do when I'm in suffering, therefore that child must be in suffering. I care about my child, therefore I care. I don't see that happening at all. Report an error

8:30 I see it being so instantaneous that the very sense of that's my child over there doesn't even come up. It's just that's suffering, that's my suffering. And it's instantaneous. So even though I'm not a mother, I kind of think I'm right. And so in that context then, the dualistic grasping of mother to child is kind of not operative. Report an error

8:53 It's just the mother's right there to do everything necessary to soothe the child, to heal the child, take care of the child. And there's no sense. Can you imagine? The mother does this and that's the child as well. Johnny, now remember what I did for you. You owe me. Quite rightly, we just laughed. That is not going to happen. Report an error

9:14 It'd be just so weird. We all look like, what, what, what? It's inconceivable. In any just ordinary mother-child relationship, there's no sense you're somehow indebted to me, or that I did something special, or even necessarily that I did something for you. I just did what had to be done. As Shantideva says, why, as he poses the question to himself, why should I, as he's looking at the enormity of the world's suffering, he's looking at it with great compassion. Report an error

9:43 Or he's, with a bit of trembling, a fear in trembling, he's looking at the prospect of arousing great compassion. Where you not only care about the suffering of the world, but you take on that sense of responsibility. I shall free the world. And he's looking at that and he's feeling it's really daunting. It's so enormous. The magnitude of suffering in the world, the underlying evils that give rises at suffering, the mental effect and so forth. Report an error

10:10 And he's kind of weighing this. You see this. It's in, I think, the eighth chapter, the meditation chapter. He's seeing on the one hand he could get out quick, like the father just runs out of the house and sends a postcard to the kids, good luck, and then he heads off into a nice cool night. He sees the possibility that he could take the short track and just get out. He knows how to meditate, he's a pure monk, he can get out if he wants to, he can get out pretty snappy and leave everybody behind and write a nice book before he goes. Report an error

10:40 That's an option. It's not a perverted option, it's kind of like just a limited option. It's a shravagayana vision. Or he's looking at this, the enormity, that sense of entanglement of himself with all sentient beings around him. And he raises this question, why should I attend to, why should I take responsibility for the suffering of the world? Report an error

11:02 I mean, really, it's almost like, do I really have to take that on? It's so big. It's so big. So he poses that question to himself in this soliloquy. Why should I? Do I need to? Do I need to? Do I need to go that route? And then the answer comes back to him from his own heart. He's not having a conversation with anybody else. He's speaking to his heart. He's speaking to his own Buddha nature. And the answer is, do I need to? Report an error

11:24 The answer is, yes, you do. Why? Because suffering has no owner. Report an error

11:35 Because suffering has no owner. So when the mother looks at her child who's just been injured, is she thinking about who owns that suffering? Report an error

11:46 It's suffering. She has the ability to help alleviate it. And it's there. And the notion that I'm doing something good for you. As opposed to doing something good for me. As opposed to, in contrast, if I were injured, this is what I would do. But since you're injured, well, here's a different strategy. Report an error

12:03 I don't think it's that. I don't think it's a different strategy at all. And so as, and this is the big Mayana theme, as the mother of her only child, so cultivate the spirit, the aspiration of a bodhisattva, to tend to everyone as your kin, as your mother, your father, your child. And so if one does that, one sees that it has to erode. Report an error

12:28 If you're doing that just a practice of the heart, you say, that's all I care about. All that wisdom teaching, I don't know, my Yamaka sounds empty and realistic, whatever. And Dzogchen way too esoteric, I can't do that. But loving, kindness, compassion, I think I can wrap my heart around that one. If that's all you wanted to do, and you really did it, you devoted yourself to it, it seems to me that's going to do major damage to dualistic grasping. Report an error

12:51 Major damage. In every way that really counts, with every sense of being around the sense of... Really me over here, really you over there. You're an object of aversion or attraction. You can do something good for me or maybe you'll get in the way. It's gone. It's gone. It's really gone. You don't have an option in that context to view another sentient being as an it. It's not on the table. That's going to solve a lot of world's problems right there. Report an error

13:19 Massively. And individual problems, interpersonal problems and so forth. So there's one way. There's one way of going right into wisdom territory. Because that's what this is. If you're really undermining, dissolving away the tendency, the steeply ingrained, conate tendency of dualistic grasping, a track of loving-kindness, compassion, great compassion, it's going to do a major thing to everyone's benefit. Report an error

13:45 So there's one realm. And it's wide open. And the lovely thing about this, I mean, I'm a pretty devout Buddhist. I have a lot of faith. It's come gradually over the years, but I do have a lot of faith. I don't expect other people to have the faith. You've not done my practice or my study and so forth, so why should you have my faith? I got it through 40 years of hard work. It doesn't come free. But even if one doesn't have a lot of confidence, faith, belief, understanding of this worldview and many aspects of the theory, this one I see, there's just no blockage, is there? Report an error

14:14 You don't have to believe this, that, you don't have to believe in Buddha. Hey, do you believe in sentient beings? That's kind of enough. Then why don't you start pretending closely and see what that means? So there's one realm. There's also a wisdom realm. Report an error

14:31 And the wisdom route we're also tapping into and that's where I want to go right now. Generally speaking, when we attend to anything, attend to our thoughts, attend to sensations in the body, to a physical object, to a human being, to a landscape, anything at all, our deeply ingrained conate proclivity or tendency is we attend, we slip into dualistic grasp. Report an error

14:56 I just saw a thought, that's my thought, that's over there, that's my thought. That's my emotion, that's my emotion, that's my emotion. I see that desire coming up. Oh, I see that kneecap. Oh, I got a finger. So everything we're touching, we have the Midas touch, the anti-Midas touch. We turn everything to lead. This leaden reification of subject and object. It just comes with the territory. We can't turn it off by an act of will. Report an error

15:25 We can't just say, okay, now I'm going to stop. When I look at Claudio, okay, now I'm just not going to have dualistic grasping. I'm going to see him in a non-dual fashion. You can't do it, not by an act of will. Can it be done? Yeah, but not that way. And so there are some very good strategies and we've been moving towards them and today we're going to go into them. Report an error

15:44 It's the last full day. Time's passing by. And that is what if you cultivate a quality of awareness where there's no object. In other words, you're all ready. You're all ready to just launch right back into the rut of give me a target, give me something to meditate on. Give me something to focus on. I'm ready. I'm ready to roll up my sleeves and get to work. Just tell me what I need to do and what I need to focus on. And you can count on it. Report an error

16:16 I'm going to reify the crap out of it. Whether it's sentient beings, Buddha, my Buddha nature. Where is that Buddha nature? I need to just find it. Report an error

16:26 I'll do something about it. I'll find it. There you are. Gotcha. And now we've got dualistic grasping to our own Buddha nature, which is absurdity. So what if we don't give any meat to that little tiger? Report an error

16:38 real, you know. Dualistic grasping. And that is we sit and there's no target. So it's just all ready to latch onto it, to grasp onto it, to reify it and then slip into dualistic grasping. But we don't give it any meat, don't give it a target to reify and then grasp onto in a dualistic fashion. Report an error

17:03 What if? What if we can do that and not space out? What if we can do that and not just go like that? What? What? Just kind of... Spacing out is perfect, exactly what it is. What if we can maintain a flow of clear, discerning, intelligent, luminous cognizance that doesn't have an object, doesn't have a vector, doesn't have a target, but it's still right there, clear and discerning. Report an error

17:33 It's not spacing out. It's not going into mystical la-la land. It's right there, but has no target. What if? Report an error

17:45 Then? There's no dualistic grasping, but there is awareness. There is awareness. Now the word for awareness in Sanskrit is vidya. Vidya. It's a rikpa in Tibetan. Vidya. But if you go to the 12 links of dependent origination, or you just go to the general teachings of the Buddha, and you say, what's the root of suffering? Report an error

18:03 Where does it start within the 12 links of dependent origination? Venerable monk, where does it start? With? Avidya. Avidya. Well, A as in amoral. And so forth and so on. It's the Indo-European language, Sanskrit. A is a, as in avidya, is a negation. Not. Right? Not. And so avidya is not awareness. Unawareness. That's what it is. So we can say ignorance, but it's not quite right. Report an error

18:34 It's not wrong. I still use that translation. But it's unawareness. Unawareness. So when you slip into a dream in that first moment, you're unaware of the nature of the reality you're experiencing. You're ignorant of it, but really, fundamentally, you're unaware. You don't know. It's not knowing, also. Vidya is not knowing, because vidya means knowing. Report an error

18:53 Also, we can translate it as awareness. So it's unknowing, not knowing, unawareness, not awareness. And then in that pregnant womb of not awareness, we're all ready to give rise to the birth of the baby of delusion and getting it wrong. It happens all the time. It happens all the time. When we don't understand someone in a conversation, And we don't understand their facial expression. We don't understand why are they showing that expression. We don't know. The chances are very high that we'll get it wrong. Somebody says something we don't understand. Report an error

19:25 Very easy. Chances are probably we're going to misinterpret it. People behave in a way we don't understand. Probably misinterpret it. We're just all ripe when we don't understand. There's so many ways of understanding. And how many ways are there of understanding correctly? The chances are we're going to miss the target. So it goes from ignorance to delusion, which means getting it wrong. First moment of a dream, you don't know what's going on. Second moment of the dream, you got it wrong. Report an error

19:48 Because you think that's a real person over there. And you think this is really who you are. So, how to not fall into avidya when there's no object? Once again, that's one of those things we weren't taught in school. And one of those things for once again, for which we have no biological imperative. We have no boost from genetics. Report an error

20:08 To be able to maintain a flow of awareness with no object, because it has zero survival value and zero appropriation. You're not going to make any better if you can do that. Report an error

20:17 So it's useless hedonically and of infinite value, eudonically. Report an error

20:28 So to be able to cultivate that quality of awareness that is still, that is luminous, cognizant, discerning, but doesn't slip into the old rut of finding an object and then reifying it, and then reifying the duality between subject and object. mean, Report an error

20:43 That turns out to be a trajectory for great depth, a trajectory for completely overcoming, transcending the deeply ingrained, conate tendency of dualistic grasping. But where does it take you? I can tell you, because this has been done so many times, I don't have to speculate. This is an experiment run thousands of times by thousands of people for thousands of years. Report an error

21:10 So the data are in. You don't have to believe what I'm saying, but I will report what has been found for a very long time. Report an error

21:19 And that is where it takes you as you develop your samādhi so you can do this single-pointedly. That is, if you do it for three seconds and then you've lost your mind again, then don't expect much. So that's where the shamatha comes in, that you can rest like that and do so with continuity and not just do it for three seconds and then you're thinking about lunch, three seconds you're thinking about your car and so forth and so on. Report an error

21:41 It's too noisy. So if you do this with shamatha, with a single-pointed continuity of relaxed, sustained... A clear awareness. Then where that's going to take you? Give you the short version. Give away the plot. And that is going to take you right through your psyche. Right through where you live. Right through where your sense of identity is lodged. Whatever you think about yourself. Your personal history. Your personality. What kind of a person you are and so forth. Report an error

22:09 It's going to be like a hot knife through butter. And it's cut right through that. Right through that. You just see yourself whisking by as you descend through the strata of your sense of identity and your mind, your psyche, which of course arises independent upon the brain, the nervous system, the environment, and so on. Report an error

22:28 You're going to cut right through that to your substrate consciousness. And the substrate consciousness is the cognitive ground out of which your mind, your consciousness, mental processes arise and into which they all dissolve every time you fall asleep and every time you die. And so you're going to penetrate to that. Report an error

22:46 Well, that's pretty deep. It's transpersonal. I won't say it's transcendent, but it is definitely transpersonal because your personhood isn't there. This is prior to your personhood and it will continue on after your personhood has terminated because you died. Because that person doesn't exist anywhere any longer. Report an error

23:07 The person who was alive and now dead, that person doesn't exist anywhere. All that continues is this continuum of substrate consciousness. So you tap into that, a space which, if you approach it clearly and cognizantly, is blissful, luminous and non-conceptual. Being non-conceptual, there's no really overt, explicit, manifest dualistic grasping, not on a coarse level. Report an error

23:34 It's non-conceptual, non-conceptual, but not absolutely non-conceptual, just very subtly. So it's still there, there's some level of grasping, some preference to, I like the bliss. I like the luminosity. I like the silence. I like the stillness of this. That's where you can get caught. But if you keep on releasing, if you just keep on releasing all the grasping, even now very subtle grasping. Report an error

23:58 So now it's gotten really subtle. Up here it's pretty coarse. But when you get down there, it's gotten definitely subtle. But if you keep on that theme of relaxation, of letting go, of release with fearlessness, then the hot night keeps on cutting through. And you slip right down into... What is called by many names, Buddha nature, pristine awareness, primordial consciousness, innate mind of clear light, you've come to the ground. You've come to the ultimate ground. Report an error

24:29 And in that ultimate ground, there is no dualistic grasping whatsoever. The very notion of subject, object, I and thou, doesn't arise. It's just not there. It's neither one nor many. It's neither here nor there. It's atempo. It's non-local. So you've come to ultimate bodhicitta. When you come to that, you've come to Buddha night. Report an error

24:52 Ultimate bodhicitta, utterly transcending any, even the tiniest vestige of dualistic grasping. It's just not even the name dualistic grasping exists. It's totally transcending. You've come to a ground that is naturally free, naturally luminous, naturally awake. Nothing to be achieved, only to be revealed, made manifest, to be realized. And so from that perspective, when you then, and if you've gone deep into meditation for the while, The whole world has vanished. You've really kind of slipped into Nirvāṇa. Nirvāṇa from the perspective of your Buddha nature. Realizing Nirvāṇa with the innate mind of clear light. Report an error

25:33 In that moment then, the whole world is temporarily vanished. It's totally transcended. Utterly, utterly transcended. But then after some time you come out of meditation. And then you're engaging with the world around you. Well, you've got a really nice surprise coming. Because out of ultimate bodhicitta comes relative bodhicitta. Spontaneously, naturally, effortlessly. Report an error

25:54 So when you come out of that depth of realization, you come out and the dualistic grasping is not there. Which means as you attend to every sentient being, it's going to be a transcendent version of the vision, the view of the mother of her only child. The compassion will be like impossible not to arise. Dualistic grasping doesn't arise. So the relative bodhicitta will come out all by itself. Report an error

26:27 And so that was the wisdom approach. The compassion approach, the skillful means approach to overcoming dualistic grasping. And there's a wisdom approach. And these are like two tributaries joining into one great unified stream of ultimate and relative bodhicitta. And that's it. That's the whole path. Report an error

26:50 Multiple doors for different people. So what I'd like to do this next session is going to be right next to that. And that is, we'll return now, so we're just about to begin, to settling the mind in its natural state. But moving beyond, moving in this practice to its greatest depth. That's not that we're going to achieve it in one session. But we're moving right into the territory to venture into this practice to its greatest depth. Report an error

27:16 And that is one in which we are no longer emphasizing so much. We're focusing on the events taking place in space of the mind, thoughts, images and so forth. But again, there's a vector, dualistic grasping is bound to come up. That would be, we'll still... Not be oblivious to those, but will be attending instead, the primary emphasis will be instead of attending to the actors on the stage of the mind, the thoughts, images that come and go, come and go. Report an error

27:47 So I think it's a nice metaphor. Instead of attending primarily to the actors who come and go in the space of the mind or on the stage of the mind, we attend primarily to the space itself, to the stage, to that which is still there in between thoughts. So it's not quite no object, not quite no object, but it's an object which is prominently an absence rather than a presence. Report an error

28:14 And see if you can sustain the flow of cognizance when the object is so ethereally intangible that you're tending to space itself. That's right next door to sustaining awareness with no object. So it's a nice little stepway into the great carriage. Report an error

28:35 Please find a very comfortable posture. Report an error

· · ·

30:00 As usual, settle the body and speech and mind in the natural state. And for a couple of minutes, calm the mind. Soothe the mind. With mindfulness of breathing, you will likely more and more deeply with every eyebrow. Report an error

· · ·

32:42 Link whenever you like. Let there be no strain at all pertaining to the eyes. All the muscles around the eyes, loose, soft, relaxed. Report an error

32:53 Shoulders relaxed. All the muscles of the face relaxed. Report an error

33:01 Spaciousness in the forehead and between the eyebrows. Report an error

33:08 A carefree expression. Report an error

· · ·

34:48 Let the light of your awareness illuminate deliberately. The space of the mind. Focusing on now on this one domain of experience out of six. Obviously the visual impressions, sounds, tactile sensations do still impinge upon your awareness. Of course they do. But don't deliberately give any attention to. Don't divert your attention to them. So Report an error

35:16 what you give your attention to, give a single point of lay to this one domain of experience that is purely mental. Report an error

35:28 Begin with do attend to the players on the stage. You may even introduce a player. By deliberately generating a discursive thought or a mental image, just to identify the target therein. Focus on the thought or image if you still find it helpful. Let that mental event or appearance fade back into the space of the mind and keep your attention fixed right where it was, ready to observe the next thought or image that arises of its own accord. Report an error

36:04 If it ever comes up, simply observe its nature without being diverted to its referent. Observe the event arising here and now in the space of your mind and sustain that flow of mindfulness without distraction, without ground. Report an error

· · ·

38:00 Make sure that your awareness is three-dimensional, so to speak. That is to say you are aware not only of the appearances that arise to you objectively, the images, the chit-chat, but also be aware of in the same fashion the subjective impulses that arise within this domain of experience, such as desires, emotions and intentions. Report an error

38:25 Observe them without distraction, without grasping. The stillness of your awareness, like an unflickering candle flame, unmoved by the activities of the mind. Report an error

· · ·

40:25 All grasping, all identification with. Simply observe the mental events as mental events. You didn't create them and you don't own them. That's all projection. There's simply a rising independence upon causes and conditions. There are events arising in the space of the mind with no owner. Observe them as such. Report an error

· · ·

42:26 Shift the focus of attention. Report an error

42:35 Take a special interest now. As you seek to sustain your attention focused on the space of the mind and its contents, Report an error

42:46 take a special interest in the intervals between thoughts. The intervals when there seems to be nothing there, no players on the stage. Report an error

42:57 But rather than spacing out, focus in, attend closely. In Report an error

43:07 the absence of thoughts and images, in the absence of activities in the space of the mind, what still is there? You may call it a space. Report an error

43:19 You may call it space of the mind, but now that's just a word or a phrase. What is it? And the only way you will know is by attending very closely. Is space of the mind that exists, or is it a sheer absence of existence? And if it is something that exists, then examine closely what are its characteristics. Report an error

44:08 We say thoughts occur in the mind, images occur in the mind. Good. It's fine English. But what's the referent of the word mind? In which thoughts, images, desires and emotions arise, what's the reference? Report an error

44:30 Through the space of the mind, let's pose some questions. Is it flat? Is it like a screen? Or is it three-dimensional? Examine closely. Report an error

44:58 Let's pose that another way. Do any three-dimensional appearances arise in the space of the mind? Or only flat images? Report an error

· · ·

45:51 Does the space of the mind have a color? Is it black? Some other color? Or is it transparent? Report an error

· · ·

46:30 Does the space of the mind have a location? Is it inside your head? Inside your body? In front of you? Behind you? All around? Does Report an error

46:43 it have any location at all? Does Report an error

· · ·

48:21 the space of the mind have a shape? Cubic? Does it have a size? How large is the space of your mind? The Report an error

· · ·

49:40 mind is most evident Report an error

49:49 closely to see whether the following statement is true. The space of the mind is always present. It is that out of which mental events emerge. Report an error

50:04 It is the space in which they are present. Report an error

50:09 And it is the space into which they dissolve into Report an error

50:20 the space of the mind. Report an error

50:24 And the events that emerge from it play themselves out within it and dissolve back into it and sustain the flow of mindfulness without distraction, without grasping. Let's continue now in silence. To Report an error

· · ·

55:15 the four measurables, we'll turn to the third one, Pathetic Joy. It's simply called muditā, which means joy. But it does have a strong connotation of empathetic, hence the adjective. Report an error

55:26 But a brief review in terms of the sequence. I know I've talked about it. But I think it might be helpful just to run to it briefly again. The fact that these four measurables do start with loving kindness, and it's actually not only in the Buddhist tradition. There's the definite sequence. It starts with loving kindness, then compassion, empathetic joy, equanimity. But you find the same list, the same list of these. Report an error

55:48 The virtues of the heart, in the Patanjali Yoga Sutras, so in the Hindu tradition, they're there as well. Same list, same names, and the same sequences, I recall, same sequence. So there's something rather deep about this that is not uniquely Buddhist, that is more general, more universal. And the fact, once again I want to emphasize this, that it starts with loving kindness, I think is enormously significant, and often it's missed. Report an error

56:11 Because mettā bhavana, mettā bhavana is often quite frequently taught. But I think it's quite frequently taught with no reference at all to eudaimonia, no distinction between hedonic and eudaimonic well-being, simply and is often taught more like a feeling, you know, may kind of really, like we're now here to generate positive emotions. Report an error

56:29 And there's nothing wrong with that at all. It's just not loving kindness in the Buddhist sense. So if one is simply generating kind of reciting phrases and trying to bring forth just a very warm affectionate feeling in the heart, very benevolent feeling in the heart. That's good. That's nice. It's just not this practice. And it's kind of missing the point because, again, it's become so, frankly, self-gratifying. Report an error

56:54 Why do you practice loving kindness? I like the feel of it. It's just so warm and soft and sweet. Chocolate in a jacuzzi. Report an error

57:05 And I have nothing against that. I like jacuzzi and I like chocolate too. But that's not metabana. And so if one is going to bring some wisdom to this, it just has to go beyond hedonic. Again, for starters, if these aspirations should be realistic. Do we really think it's realistic that everybody on the planet, including earthworms, cockroaches, rabbits, squirrels and tigers, they're all going to have a really happy day? Half of them are eating the other half, and that's just going to continue tomorrow, the next days, for as long as there are carnivores, there are going to be a lot of mammals that are having a really bad day. Report an error

57:35 And to wish otherwise is to wish for something that's not going to happen, right? Hedonic well-being is not sustainable. It comes and it goes. That's the brakes. But the loving-kindness practice can go much deeper than that. And this has always been important. But now in this 20th and then 21st century, the 20th being the most catastrophic century in the history of humanity, for humanity and for the globe, I don't think it's really contestable. Report an error

58:01 Just the damage we've done in the 20th century, in which it's continuing full throttle now, putting on, you know, like we're driving 160 miles an hour and put our little pinky on the brake. Maybe we should slow down with global warming. You know, maybe a little bit too late or way too little and way too late. Report an error

58:17 And so the momentum's up, and we're going to see how that plays out. It's not going to be good, and there's just one aspect of it. So we've done a lot of damage, the momentum's going to play itself out. But in the midst of that, we can certainly try to control the damage. We can try to alleviate suffering that's coming, maybe even avert some of the suffering. But to my mind, this is why I'm an evangelical when it comes to Yeramonia. Report an error

58:41 And that is, it should be taught, number one, attention skills should be taught in every school on the planet. And the distinction between hedonic and eudaimonic well-being should be taught in every school on the planet and should be taught in preschool. And it's not too hard to understand. Children can't understand it. And moreover, if they're living in Europe, then go back. You don't need to go to religion. Go to Socrates. He was brilliant. If you're living in China, go to Taoism. Report an error

59:04 Go to Zhuangzi. Go to the great masters. You don't need to go outside of your Chinese tradition. In India, oh, heaven's sake, they have plenty. The Jewish tradition gobs. And I said you don't have to go to religion, and if you don't like philosophy or religion, okay, well then go to science. You'll find some really good material there as well. It's recent, but it's still good. Report an error

59:21 But the distinction is so enormously important. It struck me just as I was reflecting on this that in America, one of the weirdnesses of American politics is that many relatively poor and uneducated people... Who are getting totally shafted by the Republican Party? Are we voting for the Republican Party? And voting for tax cuts for the extremely wealthy? And you kind of wonder, why are you doing that? Report an error

59:44 It's completely counter to your interests. I mean, it's just common sense. And there's an answer to that. They're not stupid. But it's the American dream. I know about the American dream. Anybody who knows about America knows the American dream. Rags to riches. You may be poor now, but you could win the lottery. Or you could strike it lucky. Report an error

1:00:03 You could be one of those filthy rich people, in which case, don't hit them too hard, because you may be one of them in 10, 20 years. You too may be filthy rich, and then you'll be glad that you gave them the tax cuts, because you'll be the recipient of it. It's wildly unrealistic for almost everybody, but it's part of the American dream, that optimism, that I too can make it big. So I don't want to cut myself off if I get there. Report an error

1:00:25 I want to leave that wide open so I get all those delicious tax breaks and advantages of the rich. That's apparently the reason. People vote against their own interest, repeatedly, consistently. It's very weird, but that seems to be the answer. But now what that answer is, is a very limited notion of what human flourishing is. Report an error

1:00:44 And that's extreme. That's not confined to America. Where we have this, so for many of us, and I know I have it, this insatiable longing to find greater happiness. Report an error

1:00:56 Insatiable longing. It's good. It's not biologically adaptive, but it's good. And where is it coming from? I'll just say it. Buddha nature. Buddha nature is insatiable. Insatiable. Until you realize the supreme bliss of the full manifestation and realization of Buddha nature, it will not be satisfied. Report an error

1:01:15 Maybe for a while, but then you won't be any longer. And it will keep you moving, moving, moving until you realize who you actually are. But in the meantime, we get derailed by never, ever hearing about it. I mean, how many people in Australia know the word eudaimonia? How many people, and this isn't highly educated, prosperous. Report an error

1:01:34 Cosmopolitan country? I love it here. Report an error

1:01:39 And how many have heard the word eudaimonia? Or the meaning of eudaimonia. They don't have to learn Greek. But the notion of human flourishing, you know, very simple. I described it in five minutes. How many people know about that? Here, Germany, South America? How many? And it's kind of like, but that means we've forgotten the wisdom tradition of our own heritage. Report an error

1:01:58 It's all over the place. The Jewish tradition, the Greek, the Christian, the... Roman, it's just everywhere. You just look, look, and you'll find it all over the place. Find it in religion outside of religion. But we've forgotten it, and that forgetfulness is really killing us here. Because if we have 7 billion people with this insatiable yearning for greater happiness, and all they can think about is acquisition and consumption, that's not going to turn out well. Report an error

1:02:21 I mean, it's not turning out well now, and it's going to only turn out worse as the population increases and the natural resources diminish. There's just no way that's going to play out in a good way. And so eudaimonia is the salvation of humanity and the planet. I don't think it's an exaggeration. And you see, I'm not plugging a religion. I'm not even plugging religion as such. Report an error

1:02:40 I'm just saying we have to get real and start being wise and not simply voracious. And right now we have voraciousness among politicians, big business and the general population, thinking that we follow that trajectory, want more and more and it's going to somehow turn out well. So eudaimonia. And that's where vision comes in and that's where loving kindness comes in. Report an error

1:03:00 Start. Give people a vision. Give yourself a vision that you may not have a whole lot of upward mobility financially, especially if you're my age. I mean, what's the chances if you're not successful now? Do you really think you're going to strike it rich at the age of 64? It's not likely. Or if you have limited education or you're in a financial situation, you're just not going to be one of those rich and wealthy people. Report an error

1:03:21 But could you be fabulously happy? Yeah, but you have to envision another kind of happiness. And that's where the vision has to come in. That's loving kindness. Loving kindness for yourself, loving kindness for others, for the planet, envisioning that we really could flourish, even with seven billion of us, maybe a few more. We could flourish. Report an error

1:03:41 It really could work out, but not with a hedonic vision, not with a materialistic worldview, hedonic values and a consumer-driven way of life. There's no way that's going to work out at all, ever. It's going to lead to our self-destruction. So loving kindness is a big deal. Wise, loving kindness. It's uplifting. It gives vision. You see, even if you know you're not going to ever make more than a minimum wage and you're 55 years old, you could still be enormously happy. Report an error

1:04:09 Happier than a billionaire. And that's a fact. Happier than many billionaires. They're so in comfort, so burdened down, walking around big bags of sand on their ankles. I've seen them. I know some billionaires. Big bags of sand. Holding onto the ankles, they can hardly move for all of their concerns about their wealth, their investments, the market going this way, the market going that way, and the currency is going this way, and the investment is going that way, and shifting markets, and oh man, I'd rather eat dirt. Report an error

1:04:39 Really, I think I'd literally rather eat dirt than have a billion dollars and have that way of life. I mean, I want happiness, and that's not. And that was for the sake of happiness, and it's not delivering the goods. And if you have happiness, you don't need those goods. And I've witnessed that, I've experienced that, it's just true, but it's not a very public truth. So scientists can help, contemplatives can help, but we uplift ourselves with the vision of loving kindness, as I've mentioned before, and then we ground ourselves with awareness like space, but our feet firmly on the ground, we get grounded in the reality of our awareness of suffering, and the causes of suffering. Report an error

1:05:17 So we're not going into some kind of rose-tinted glasses kind of domain where everything is strawberry fields forever. Grounded right there in the daily news, what's happening in the world, here and now, the way we're perpetuating our own suffering needlessly. It tears the heart and brings forth compassion. And as we linger on that, we attend to that, it becomes real for us. Empathetic sadness does arise. Report an error

1:05:43 It can be overwhelming on times. The Germans have a good word for it, and it's weltschmetz, weltschmetz, your pain of the world. It doesn't have any particular target, not Syria or Liberia or any particular direction. It's more like the oceanic empathy of a bodhisattva. And it can be really, it's easy for it to be overwhelming. Report an error

1:06:09 And when it is overwhelming, we start to fall into that false facsimile of compassion. Start just having that sense. This is so enormous, I don't actually see any light at the end of the tunnel. I don't see any light. I don't see any hope. Even the notion of Yeramone is kind of getting misty, fading out. Report an error

1:06:27 And we're just looking at the hedonic mess and seeing it's going down, down. And we can go into a loop where it starts to feed on itself. That is, the more depressed you become, the more you filter your awareness of reality so you only see the negative. But then that compounds the depression so you go deeper into it and after a while it's a total tailspin. It becomes chronic. And so when one is even beginning to go down that slippery slope and it's time to bring in a remedy, there it is right next door. Report an error

1:07:01 Empathetic joy. Empathetic joy. That when we do feel sometimes helpless, overwhelmed by the magnitude of suffering and the cause of suffering in the world, Are we seeing the whole truth, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? The answer is no. You're not. That's not all there is to it. There are many joys in the world, hedonic and eudaimonic. Report an error

1:07:22 There are many virtues in the world. But we're not given much help by way of the media. And there are all kinds of reasons for that. You probably understand them better than I do. When the question is raised, when you look at any of the popular media, the major newspapers here in Australia, CNN, BBC and so forth and so on, what's the news? Report an error

1:07:43 Oh, about 98 % negative. On a regular basis. And we're getting it in big doses. Okay, what's the disaster today? Oh, that was a disaster today. Some gunman opened up in the government grounds in Ottoland and shot a policeman. Report an error

1:08:03 He thought that was a good thing to do. He thought that would be pleasing in the eyes of Allah. One more. Report an error

1:08:13 So that's what we get. Every single day. That's where the headline is. Look for the headline that's really good news. You're going to be waiting a long time. It's pretty much misery and the causes of misery. So the media is not going to help us much with empathetic joy. It apparently doesn't sell. They've tried. I've heard they tried. And it just doesn't sell. Report an error

1:08:31 People don't really want to hear the good news. They want to hear what's threatening. And I think there's a biological imperative for that. I think there we have biology. If you're there to survive and procreate and somebody's giving you some really good news, fine, next. I want to know what's going to get in the way of my surviving and procreating and all the good news because the good news I don't need to attend to. Report an error

1:08:52 That takes care of itself. It's the bad news I need to know about because that can imperil my survival and my procreation. Right? So that explains it. So it's not just crass materialism or commercialism. On the part of the media, oh you nasty people trying to exploit us for our fears and anxieties. It's actually, it makes sense. The good news is fine, but that's fluff. Report an error

1:09:15 That's, in American evening TV, they'll give you all the bad news for the first, if it's 22 minutes, they'll give you bad news for 20 minutes, and then they'll tell you about puppies, or about the best chocolate cake that was ever invented, and they'll show you somebody eating it. That's the human extra story. Kind of like, okay, now that we've ground your face in the feces for 20 minutes. Report an error

1:09:37 How's this for dessert? Some chocolate to cover the feces. So there's a real reason why that strong emphasis. But that doesn't mean that it's realistic. It just means that that's appealing to our fears, addressing our fears. And we have fears, most of us do. Report an error

1:09:56 But it doesn't give us a balanced view of reality. And so for this empathetic joy that we'll address right now and slowly take a break, it's balancing out. So when we're falling into that morass... A fixation on suffering and evil, precisely. We may have a realistic response to it, which of course is sadness, despair even, but it's a realistic response to a fraction of reality and not the whole of reality, because that's not the whole. Report an error

1:10:26 And so it takes some effort. It takes some effort at any time in history, but especially takes effort in our phase of history where we have so much information coming in about the world, unprecedentedly, and it's almost all negative. Report an error

1:10:40 Naturally it gives rise to a sense of deadness, like the physician. Like the physician who's just seen 10,000 patients and just finds that the warmth of empathy has cooled. You just can't do it anymore. The heart is kind of just melting away and there's just nothing left to give. You say, I just can't empathize with this person. I've empathized as much as I can and I just have to treat the symptoms. Report an error

1:11:06 Because I have a family to take care of. I have a life and I can't just get caught up in everybody's tragedy. It just sucks me dry. So I know a wonderful man at Stanford Medical School. He's an infant neurologist as a specialty. And he's a Christian, but he calls himself a Christian of the Confusionist sect. Report an error

1:11:28 Because he has a lot of questions. I have great admiration for him. He's a very, very good man. And when I worked with him to organize a conference for the Dalai Lama years ago, and he at that time ran the Neuroscience Institute at Stanford University, so a man with a lot of influence, but he knew a lot about medical schools in the modern world, deeply related to Stanford Medical School, which is an outstanding one. Report an error

1:11:52 And he made a comment that is relevant to everybody from his observations of how medical schools work. He was like my age, he had a lot of experience. And he said, you know what happens is that students come in, like fresh graduates coming from the undergraduate work, having done pre-med, and they're applying to one of the best medical schools in the world, like Stanford. Report an error

1:12:13 And they're coming in, many of them, I can't say every single one, but many of them are coming in with altruism. They would really like to do something good for the world, hence medicine, rather than becoming an investment banker, which is probably going to be more money. But they're going in with a motivation to want to heal, to do something good for the world. And they get through six years of medical school, and that's history by the time they get out. Report an error

1:12:36 The altruism is gone. They become professional. They become cold. They become materialistic. And it's just burnt out. They got no help to sustain that little candle, that little flame of warmth, of altruism, of humanness, of affection. They got no encouragement because it's just all data, data, data, data. Massive data influx. Learning this, learning that. And then, of course, modern medicine is just saturated by materialistic assumptions. Report an error

1:13:05 That you are your brain, you are your body. We're basically treating a body, you are a body. So that's being hammered in right, left and center. And by the time they come out, they're very efficient, cold-blooded physicians. Now, obviously not every single time, and it's not my judgment. I'm listening to him telling him what he passed, but I think he's not living in a fantasy world here. Well, as for medical students, then as for us, we're not doing the grand rounds on a regular basis, but if you're checking in with the media, you're seeing the tragedy in the world. Report an error

1:13:36 And so, how to maintain, how to restore that? If it gets damaged through materialistic beliefs and so forth, or whether it's through just modernity or the onslaught of our exposure to suffering and evil, how to balance that out, how to maintain emotional balance, a resilience and openness, an openness of heart that can still be sensitive to every individual we meet as we encounter all sentient beings every day. Report an error

1:14:02 And some are troubled and some are joyful and some are serene and some are angry and some are selfish and so forth. To maintain this openness of heart. Well, the remedy, as we see right here, for falling into kind of a sadness, a despair, where compassion is kind of smothered, because there's no vision, there's no clarity, and therefore no real aspiration, heartfelt aspiration, for the relief of suffering. Report an error

1:14:28 So something needs to come and rescue, compassion that's fallen astray, fallen into a rut on the side of the road, like a roadkill, and it's become despair. And it's empathetic joy. So empathetic joy among the four immeasurables is the only one that's an emotion. It's joy. It's taking delight. And now what's the object? Report an error

1:14:50 Well, you recall that in loving kindness and compassion, what's the object? Sentient beings. Sentient beings. Wishing for them to find happiness in the causes, but sentient beings are the object that you're attending to. With compassion, you're attending to sentient beings and wishing that they may be free of suffering in its causes. But here the object is the joys, the successes. Report an error

1:15:17 So just as they take delight, if a young person gets into a university they really apply to and are really hoping to get into, and they get in. Hedonic pleasure. Good. Or you see children happily playing in a safe environment, and they're relaxed and they're cheerful and they're just doing what kids love to do, having fun. Report an error

1:15:37 Taking delight, that's empathetic joy. Hedonic, no problem. Take delight in that. People's successes, their joys. And then also as we look a little bit deeper, any virtue at all, any virtue at all, whether it's an act of kindness, whether it's wisdom, whether it's generosity, whether it's patience, whether it's a socially engaged virtue manifesting in the world or whether it's a very private, solitary yogi meditating with a pure motivation in solitude, attending to, looking for, seeking out and then focusing on virtue wherever it is and taking delight in it, rejoicing in it. Report an error

1:16:17 So in the classic meditation, there it is. Now we're on page 7, towards the middle, empathetic joy. Part 8. In the sequence of this classic meditation, Buddhagosa, this is again coming back to him, okay, who shall you attend to first? And he suggests, well, focus first on a very dear companion, so one who's just that, very dear, who is constantly of good cheer. You may know such people. They're not all that common, but they're not extremely rare either. Report an error

1:16:50 Right? Somebody you know well who just basically is upbeat, cheerful, warm-hearted, probably gregarious. They're out there and they, you know, they just bring light to the situation. No, you know people like that. I do. And you may know them personally or you may know them on the world stage. Dalai Lama is a very obvious example of that in a very meaningful way. Report an error

1:17:08 He's not just a happy-go-lucky guy. In fact, his good cheer has tremendous depth. But just generally, people who are good cheer and attending to them and taking delight. In that lightness, that cheerfulness, just those qualities that they bear, taking delight in their good cheer, their happiness, their success, the warmth they bring to others. Report an error

1:17:30 So it starts there. And then you go to attending to either present, past, or future. So you can think of people in history who have embodied such happiness, such good cheer, such well-being. And then focus on a neutral person. Report an error

1:17:50 A neutral person, though, who is, you know, in the world of actuality, bearing in mind for loving kindness and compassion, you're really venturing into the realm of possibility. You're envisioning and aspiring to the well-being, the causes of well-being of individuals who have not yet manifested it, not yet actualized it. Report an error

1:18:08 But may you realize something you haven't yet. When you direct it yourself, may I realize something that's not already actual, but definitely could be. If I put my heart and mind to it, so it's moving into the realm of possibility to invite it into the realm of actuality. I think it's enormously important to just recognize and linger with the recognition that reality consists not only of the realm of actuality. Report an error

1:18:36 That's not all there is to reality. If it were, nothing would ever change because nothing could ever be what it's not already because it would be actual. Report an error

1:18:47 But then everything will be frozen. And so within reality, there has to be a realm of possibility. Possibilities are real. There's a possibility that within the next ten seconds I will raise my right hand. It's not certain yet. I don't know myself. But it's possible. It was possible. Now it's not possible. Not within that ten second interval. But it could have happened, you know. I was going, either way, either way. Give it a rest. Report an error

1:19:17 Give it a rest. Because you know I can do it. I didn't need to prove it to you. But it was a possibility during that second second, and it's a possibility now. Oh, shazam, it happened. But those are possibilities, you know, a trivial one. But it's also a possibility that you could achieve rainbow body in this lifetime. I didn't see that one coming, did you? That you could come to the culmination of the path of Dzogchen and realize perfect awakening in this lifetime. Report an error

1:19:42 It's possible, too. It's a bit harder than this. But that's also possible. It's possible to achieve bodhicitta. It's possible to achieve shamatha. But you know how it's not possible? If you're quite persuaded, it's not possible. That'll pretty much put a cork in it. So that's what the Dalai Lama is getting at. If you lose hope, then the situation's hopeless. Report an error

1:20:03 Not because it made it so, but because you made it so. But if you linger and you focus on that possibility, then like a person reading in a fish, you may reel in from the realm of possibility something that then becomes or is invited into and takes its place in the realm of actuality. So in the meditative cultivation of loving kindness and compassion, we're attending to the realm of possibility with the aspiration to invite it into the realm of actuality, that what we're aspiring for may be realized. Report an error

1:20:33 But of course, we'll do that only if we think it's possible. Otherwise, we're just fooling ourselves, and life is too short for that. But when we go to empathetic joy, we're right now, there's such a symmetry here. When you're moving from loving kindness to compassion, you're really coming as you're lofting into the... Report an error

1:20:50 Wide open space of the possibility of genuine happiness, of awakening and so forth and so on. And then you come back to the realm of actuality. Meanwhile, here's suffering, here's evil in the world, in our own lives as well as the world around us. It brings us back to actuality, but then lifts us up again into the realm of possibility. Yes, things look very dark. Yes, global warming. Yes, economic. Report an error

1:21:12 Yes, biological. Catastrophes that could be coming along with drug-resistant viruses and bacteria. That's all definitely possible. It will be difficult. And so we can get mired down into that world of actuality. But then, instead of meeting or trying to remedy the sadness, the despair that comes from attending to the realm of actuality, the suffering and evil of the world, instead of trying to remedy that with one more happy thought about what could be, which might not have a whole lot of lift-off. Report an error

1:21:47 If you're really, really dwelling and focusing on the actuality of suffering and evil in the world, that's got a lot of gravitas to it, that's got a lot of weight. So to try to bring in a balloon of one more happy thought, you know, it could be better, that may not get liftoff. That's just so much weight in the suffering of the world, the amount of evil and mental afflictions around the world. Report an error

1:22:08 You're going to have to have something, you have to have something pretty powerful to get out of that inertia. So venturing once again into the realm of possibility may not quite... And that's where the physician's heart becomes cold. Report an error

1:22:37 So to meet a very dire actuality, you'd better meet it with another actuality. Same level, same even playing field. And that is, Look again. You didn't get the whole picture. There's a radiant virtue out there. There's a lot of joy. And it's already there, but you do need to look for it. And you probably won't find it in the New York Times or the BBC or the Australian Times, whatever your newspapers are. You probably won't find it there. You get a little glamour, like your human interest stories. Report an error

1:23:09 That's not it. We're looking for something deeper there. But it's kind of hidden in plain sight, you know, really. It's not like it had to be Sherlock Holmes. It's hidden in plain sight. The amount of virtue there is in this room right now. That's enough to rejoice in for a year. I don't think I'm exaggerating. I've listened to you. I've watched you. The aspirations, the virtue, the ideals. Report an error

1:23:34 Isn't it impressive? And this is just a group of 50 people and not 50 Nobel Peace Prize winners. There's a lot to rejoice in. It's true. That's really something. And then we're not the only little community that's come together for six days and will disband. There are actually quite a few. Some are Christians, some are simply humanists, and so forth and so on. Report an error

1:23:58 So if we keep our eyes open, what the press doesn't cover, we can cover just how much kindness, how much goodness there is in the world that's not walking around with a neon sign, that doesn't make the headlines, doesn't make any news at all, but it's so real. It's so real. You just have to look for it. Virtue of all kinds, profound virtue, that you have to look for a bit more, but you will find it. Report an error

1:24:22 If you look in the right place, there's nowhere to look. It is so uplifting, so tremendously uplifting. So that's where empathetic joy comes in. It's looking right back at the realm of actuality, but with an agenda. That is, we're looking for something now. Suffering and evil is kind of impinging from all sides. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear you. Very loud and clear. Actually, I've got your message already. Let's see what else there is. What else is going on besides suffering and evil? Report an error

1:24:47 Oh, joy and virtue. And not only elsewhere. Because when we come back after the break, we're going to be doing this in an even-handed way. Report an error

1:25:00 It's enjoyable, this practice. It's nice. To be attending to with an open heart, attending to others' joys, especially if you're doing it in real life. I'll give you a really trivial example, but I'm talking about it now maybe ten years after the fact. But I was in Holland, down there for a later retreat, just over the border in Belgium. We're driving back to Amsterdam, I think. Report an error

1:25:28 A good friend of mine, a good friend of mine, he was driving me, he was coming back from the retreat. We're driving through the Netherlands. Anybody who knows the Netherlands, it's a pretty well-run country. It's clean. There's no significant poverty. It's healthy. They're really very open-minded, very progressive. There's very little racism and bigotry there, very little corruption. Report an error

1:25:47 I'm not saying it's a pure land or it's a heaven, but it's a pretty nice country. It's healthy. It's quite safe. And so we're just driving through this very pleasant country, going through a village, and it was about 3 o 'clock in the afternoon, and I saw a group of children, maybe 12 years old, a small group, like a half dozen, boys and girls. Report an error

1:26:09 And they're walking on one of the little residential roads on the sidewalk. A couple of them have their bikes. I just watched them, you know, we're just driving by. I mean, I want to emphasize how, not trivial, but how small this is. And yet not. So I just watched them as we just casually drove by. And I saw their healthy faces, their smiling faces, how they're just enjoying each other, chatting, smiling, laughing, and walking their bikes along. Report an error

1:26:37 Emotions coming out right now. I was overwhelmed. I just thought, this is how it should be. They don't have to worry about landmines. They don't have to worry about war. They don't have to worry about malevolent adults. They really don't. Chances are so microscopic. They're living in a healthy neighborhood. They're getting good education. They're enjoying each other's company. And they're coming home. And they'll probably be okay when they get there. Report an error

1:27:02 Again, it's not heaven. I know that. But just seeing these children at ease, cheerful, joyful, healthy, coming back from school. There's really hope. It's so simple. Now how many times does that happen every day? Something so simple, but really rejoice in. Because there are many places, of course, where that's not true. Report an error

1:27:24 But there are many places where it is true. And to take delight in that. And then we're gone. But that memory still lingers so vividly. I was just taking delight in the simple pleasure of their walking home after school. Safe, healthy. That's what children should be. They should be safe, healthy, healthy. Report an error

1:27:48 So we have to keep our eyes open. And it does give joy. It really uplifts. It gives hope. Things could be like that. It could be that light. You don't have to be rich for that. In other words, a fairly rich country. You don't have to be rich to have kids coming home with a bicycle and be happy enjoying each other's company. Report an error

1:28:06 That doesn't take a lot of wealth. Report an error

1:28:10 So there it is, a certain invitation to attend, to be looking for happiness, virtue, joy in the world and taking delight in it. Not simply saying, oh kids, whatever, it's not my kids. Attending, lingering, focusing, taking delight. It's not that hard. But something we ever so often overlook, because we get virtually no encouragement to do the opposite. Almost none. And it's kind of considered to be dangerous ground, I think. Report an error

1:28:38 And I understand why. Is taking delight in our own virtues. Saying that sounds like it could be creepy. Report an error

1:28:50 It could be self-congratulatory. It could be, I am so much better than you because I've got this virtue you don't have. And it's not that. The narcissism, the pride, arrogance, competitiveness, all that whole genre there, the sense of feeling superior to others, all of that, that whole syndrome, so to speak, all has a common denominator, some common factor. Report an error

1:29:14 It's all looking at me. I. I have this quality. I have this achievement. I have this virtue. I have. I have. And then I'm special. So the referent is me. I'm something special. Report an error

1:29:29 Well, then it's just ignorance, it's Aiwen, it's pride, it's one more mental affliction. But as commented in Buddhism and in modern psychology, don't conflate the behavior with the person, don't conflate the mental affliction with the person, don't conflate the disease with the person, you know, be sharp, be clear, distinguish these are not the same. Report an error

1:29:49 Well, likewise, don't conflate the virtue with the person, don't conflate the achievement, the success, the joy with the person. But we can take if it's legitimate. To take joy, to take great satisfaction, to take delight in the virtues of others, then why shouldn't it be okay? And taking delight in the virtues of others, I'm not thinking, oh, you're so superior, you're so special. I want to adulate you, you're so special, you're so high. Report an error

1:30:20 Oh, not that, that's just idolatry. We don't need that. That's not it at all. It's taking delight in the virtue, just as we may condemn a non-virtue. A view that distorts the human spirit and crushes our souls. A mental affliction such as hatred or bigotry or racism. We can despise that. We can launch it. We can try to terminate it, annihilate it. No problem. But don't, of course, annihilate the racists and don't try to annihilate or harm people who hold harmful views because then we're just part of the problem. Report an error

1:30:50 So it's the same theme. So here we're taking delight not in the person. Like, I think you're swell, you're great, you are great, but rather taking delight in the virtue, whatever it may be, taking delight in the virtue as we attend outwardly. But if that's legitimate, and it certainly is and entails no idolatry at all, not when it's done correctly, because you're taking delight in the virtue, not simply celebrating the individual who may not be virtuous tomorrow. Report an error

1:31:19 People change, you know, they do good things and they do bad things. But the virtue is still virtue. Even if a person is on this particular day no longer enacting it, the virtue is still a virtue. Just like a mental addiction is still a mental affliction, a racist view is still a racist view, even if the racist no longer holds that view. Report an error

1:31:36 So it's like smallpox, you like to eradicate it completely, maybe keep one vial just so you remember what it used to be, but contained so nobody can catch it any longer. And so when it comes to virtue then, we're moving into this ground, which is actually not a central thing, but an important thing in Buddhism. Report an error

1:31:55 As Tsongkhapa said, I'm quoting him a number of times, he's so brilliant and such a great adept himself, he said, the easiest way to increase your own merit, the power of your own virtue, the goodness within your being, the easiest way to do that, this is really good news, ready? The easiest way to increase, to empower your own merit, your virtue, your goodness, is to take delight in it. Take delight in it. Report an error

1:32:22 But the phrasing is very careful. Not taking delight in yourself as being, oh, what a good Dharma practitioner I am. Wow. We've already been there. We don't need to say that again. Taking delight in the virtue. Now if Shantideva says, why should I care about the suffering of others? And the answer comes in, because the suffering has no owners. Report an error

1:32:42 I'm about to say stupid. It has no owner. It's suffering. Suffering is to be dispelled. That's why. If suffering has no owner, how about virtue? Report an error

1:32:54 It's to be taken. Delight in it. It doesn't have an owner. It happens. It arises independence upon cause and condition. So take delight in it when it happens. And wherever it happens, and wherever it happens includes sometimes it occurs in your own continuum. And Tsongkhapa, this brilliant monk, scholar, adept, bodhisattva, everything, he said this is the easiest way to enhance, to empower, to augment the virtue in your own life by taking delight in it, in that virtue that manifests. Report an error

1:33:31 So it's an important point. And it's a point that, again, where do you read about that? Christianity, you might find it here or there, but I had a lot of exposure to Christianity. I don't remember that one coming up. In psychology, maybe it's there. I haven't studied psychology that much, but I don't think so. And if it's not there, then where else would it be? Report an error

1:33:50 In philosophy or biology? So it's one of those things, enormously important, very helpful, squeaky clean when you know what it really means. Because it does not, I know this to be true, it does not enhance or augment egotism. Report an error

1:34:04 Or pride or arrogance, simply taking delight in your virtue. I'll tell you what, it's that story I told before. I think I say it so often, I don't know whether I've said it this time or not. But when I had a conversation with the Dalai Lama and he simply said, when you see virtue arising, simply be grateful rather than possessing it and thinking now somehow you're superior. Report an error

1:34:26 I don't think I told him this retreat, but it doesn't matter. That's the essence of it right there. When you see virtue arising, maybe you've been practicing Dharma for a long time, you've been meditating, and some really good things are coming up. That's what's supposed to happen. That your mental things subside, your virtues increase. Report an error

1:34:41 I mean, that's what it's all about, really. And if it happens, then of course if one is a kind of a dumbbell, then you'll identify with your virtues and then think you're superior to other people. But really it's the dumbbell response. It's stupid. Because these virtues arising independently upon causes and conditions. Report an error

1:34:58 And that includes teachers and spiritual friends and the wisdom of the ages and so forth. And it's coming up. And the Dalai Lama said the only realistic response when you see this happening is gratitude. Or you can say delight also. It's delightful gratitude. Just being so happy that, for example, if you're following this path, you've encountered the Buddha Dharma. Report an error

1:35:18 You've unfounded qualified teachers. You've gotten authentic teachings. You've put them into practice. And they're helping you. Report an error

1:35:25 That's just, there's only one response that has any reality to it at all. Be grateful and be happy, and nothing more. But then, of course, if you see your next-door neighbor has also encountered really good teachings and teachers and spiritual friends and practices and practicing well, and that person's really flourishing, finding greater happiness, greater virtue, less mental afflictions, less suffering, what's the response? Report an error

1:35:49 Gratitude and happiness. It's the same. There's no difference at all. That's why this empathetic joy, if we can so polarize ourselves internally, as we do so commonly in the modern world, where we're looking down on ourselves, that old syndrome again, looking down on ourselves, I am such a disappointment to myself, blah, blah, blah. Report an error

1:36:11 If we know how to do that, to polarize ourselves so we have a subject-object relationship within our own continuum, which is kind of weird, frankly, because we can do that, and again, it's a person-person. It's not just that I'm disgusted with qualities, but I'm disgusted with that I have those qualities, that I am such a selfish person, angry, irritable, whatever it may be. Report an error

1:36:32 So we're polarizing in a delusional fashion, which is just literally self-defeating. But if we know how to create this internal dialogue, this internal observation within ourselves, why not put a spin on it that is productive, conducive to our own happiness? And that is, if we're going to objectify aspects of our being, as we do in self-contempt, I think you're a shit like that, you, you guy, you know, this one. If we're going to do that internally, then, and it's called totally destructive, of course, then why not internally just say, start taking delight in the virtues that are there? Report an error

1:37:08 What's the problem? If we're going to objectify, well then do it in a meaningful way. So that is a great antidote to self-deprecation, self-hatred, self-loathing. Report an error

1:37:20 I understand it. I've experienced it myself. But it's so highly selective. It's moronic. Because nobody's that bad. Nobody can be consistently that bad. But we get selective. We fall into the rut. And then we just fall into the rut more and more and more. We learn how to attend to our own negativities, our own limitations, our own failures and so forth. Report an error

1:37:39 We get good at it. And we do it a lot. And that, of course, it compounds itself. I've seen this so many times. So many times. And I've observed it. And I find that it's not helpful to anybody, not to the person who's experiencing that low self-esteem or anybody else. It's just like negative all the way around. And so here's a remedy for that. Get out of it, you know, get out of that trap and start being realistic because you're realistic in a very narrow groove and you're delusional in identifying yourself with these limitations, faults, defects. Report an error

1:38:14 And so shift over here, start getting real and start observing. Where is there virtue in your own continuum? Where is there something good? And you shouldn't have to wait too long. You'll probably find it if you are really looking and then take delight on it. Focus on it. Make it real. Take delight in it. And you will bootstrap yourself out of that old syndrome. Because what we attend to becomes a reality. It's that simple. So this, this is really timely for modern times. Report an error

1:38:41 This one especially. This one especially. When low self-esteem, all of that is so endemic and we're being so assaulted by negative news all the time, every single day. That's a massive bias in the reality that we're being exposed to. It is reality, but it's so partial. And this is coming in like a breath of fresh air. Report an error

1:39:00 It's saying, you know, attend to this too. So, I'll pause there. We had this morning for Empathetic Joy. Let's take a break and come back at 10.55. We'll go directly to meditation. Go Report an error

· · ·

1:39:54 directly to meditation. We Report an error

· · ·

1:41:23 may take delight in this opportunity now that we have nothing else to do. But to cultivate our hearts and minds so that we can find greater sense of well-being and happiness in the world and be of greater benefit to those around us. So in a spirit of muditā, settle your body, speech and mind in the natural state. Report an error

1:41:42 Enter into the practice always in the spirit of ease, the first step being of letting go, relaxing Report an error

1:41:54 body, speech and mind in the natural state. And then soothe the mind, continue in that same continuum of soothing, calming, grounding, centering the mind. So that it becomes useful to do meaningful things. As Report an error

· · ·

1:43:45 we venture into the main practice that I join, Report an error

1:43:52 I invite you now to direct your attention back as far as you can in your early childhood, as far as your memories reach. Report an error

1:44:06 But not simply randomly attending to old memories, but going back to early childhood. Now go back with a question. Report an error

1:44:19 From your earliest memories, deliberately focus on the kindnesses that have been shown to you of Report an error

1:44:34 the relatives and friends, of teachers. And so people who have enriched your life, who have protected you, cared for you, attended to your hedonic needs, and perhaps even from early on attended to your deeper needs, truly contributed to your well-being, your flourishing. Report an error

1:44:59 Attend to the acts of kindness, of generosity, the acts of virtue directed to you for your benefit. And as you attend to them in Report an error

1:45:16 the virtues of others, as they have been directed and shared with you, move slowly from early childhood, Through later childhood, adolescence, move on through time. And in each phase of your life, Report an error

1:45:37 those virtues that have been shown to you, and again, in a spirit of gratitude, in a spirit of rejoicing or taking to light. Report an error

1:46:10 Join this with a breath just to give a bit more coherence, more traction in your meditation with every out-breath. You may breathe out, breathe out your gladness, your gratitude, as if you're in the presence of the person who showed you the kindness and you're expressing it here and now, expressing your thanks. Report an error

1:46:33 And Report an error

· · ·

1:54:17 this time run through this timeline up to the present moment, during the second half of this session, and this time with the second question, and that is, what good have you brought to the world as a child and adolescent? Report an error

1:54:35 Attend to the virtues, virtues in solitude, virtues in relationship to the natural environment, other people. Whatever goodness you've brought to the world, attend to it, focus on it, and take delight in it, as you do in the virtue of others, in exactly the same way, take delight in your own virtue. Report an error

1:55:00 early childhood on, right up to the present moment. Report an error

· · ·

2:03:37 simply let your awareness rest in place. One Report an error

· · ·

2:06:40 I enjoy immensely, actually. Having studied physics, the branch of contemporary physics that especially ignites my imagination is a theory proposed by a number of very eminent, very, very eminent physicists such as John Wheeler, Stephen Hawking and others of that caliber. It's taking the principles of quantum mechanics and applying them to the whole universe. Report an error

2:07:07 And so instead of seeing a quantum system as being an isolated, located, little place in space, buffered from the surrounding messy environment, and with the notion that the messy environment will bring decoherence, and that is wash out all the quantum effects, just taking the whole cosmos of the quantum system. Report an error

2:07:24 Well, what comes out of that, very briefly, because this is going to be actually relevant here, if we view the entire universe as a quantum system, then we bring the principles of quantum mechanics to it, of course, and a core principle that is... Kind of universally known in quantum mechanics. And that is before you make the measurement of anything. That what is there already prior to the measurement is not a world of actualities already discreetly bunched up and located in real space and real time. Report an error

2:07:52 But rather a field of potentiality. Sometimes called a probability function, probability wave. But it's basically a field of potential. And then depending on the type of measurement you bring to bear, then a reality will rise up to meet you. Corresponding to the questions you're posing and the type of measurement system that you're applying to, that's what you're attending to. In which case, if you are interested in light and you bring one type of measuring device to the question, the light will appear to you as electromagnetic fields, so it's waves, fields. Report an error

2:08:22 Bring another measurement system to it and it appears as being of a particular nature, that is little clumps, little photons. And fields and particles are utterly different. One thing cannot be a field and a particle. Because they have just utterly different qualities. But the interesting thing there is that the actuality arises relative to the act of measurement and isn't already there. Report an error

2:08:44 So in other words, observation is not passive, just plucking from reality what's already there, independent of measurement, but always arrives relative to the measurement. Core theme in quantum mechanics. It raises unresolved questions, and that is, what is the nature of measurement? And is a conscious observer necessary? And these are questions that have been around for 90 years now. Report an error

2:09:05 Werner Heisenberg, Evan Schröderner and others, great pioneers in the field. And oddly enough, there doesn't seem to have been any actual progress. And I think there are good reasons. My speculation is because they don't have any idea what consciousness is. Physicists get no training in it. What's the nature of the observer? Well, you don't get any training in that in physics. Report an error

2:09:24 But if they look over the cognitive sciences, frankly, they're not getting much help there either. Because it's so objective. It's not about behavior, brain, interviews and so forth. But introspection just doesn't play a role. In modern psychology, let alone in physics. So how is this germane? Well, Stephen Hawking and a brilliant colleague of his by the name of Thomas Hertogh took the principle of quantum mechanics and they applied it to the past. Report an error

2:09:47 And they published a paper in a top-notch peer-reviewed scientific journal. And they said, well, you know, if this is true of the present, if the present exists only as a field of potentiality before we make an observation or a measurement, well, that has to be true for the past as well. That everything we know about the past, and this relates to the meditation we just did, everything we know about the past is always based upon measurements we're making in the present. Report an error

2:10:13 We never leap out of the present and kind of dip into the pool of the past and just pluck it and then bring it into the present. So whatever we know about the past at any time is always based on an observation, a measurement that we're making in the present. And of course it's not just a God's eye perspective or God's measurement, but it's... Report an error

2:10:32 The measurement we're making hinges entirely on the questions we're posing. We don't just ask, what was the past? We never do that. I mean, it's too large. So we ask a specific question about the past. Like, what is the earliest act of kindness you can recall when you're growing up? That's a very specific question. Report an error

2:10:50 But you're making a measurement. But unfortunately, you can't leap back 20, 30, 40, 50 years. You have to make a measurement to see what comes up now as you're posing that question. And the measurement is a measurement you're making now. That has some relevance to the past. But of course, what question are you asking and how are you asking it? With what type of measurement system? And so Stephen Hawking's point here is actually stunning and I'm a little bit surprised that it hasn't made more of a splash than it has. Report an error

2:11:17 Because he is who he is, but he knows the name. And that is the past, whatever the past was, whether it's the past of the universe or your own individual past, the past is the past, that it... It doesn't already exist objectively, absolutely independent of anybody's measurement. Because before you make a measurement pertaining to the past, the past also exists in a state, a superposition state it's called, a state of potentiality. Report an error

2:11:45 It's an interesting idea. Because the widespread, the perspective of metaphysical realism, the view that everything is obviously... Absolutely out there already. Assumes you're plucking it. You're plucking a photon here, an asteroid there, a galaxy here and so forth and so on because they're already there waiting to be plucked. Report an error

2:12:02 But that's just not the message in quantum mechanics. So what's the implication? Cut to the chase. Stephen Hawking said there is no absolutely true history of the universe because what we know about the history of the universe is relative to the questions we're posing and the way we're posing them with what kind of measurement system. Report an error

2:12:21 And so the past exists as a field of potentiality, which means there are multiple pasts, not one absolutely true one, there are multiple pasts that arise relative to the question you're posing and the way you're posing, the type of measurement system you're using. That's a very novel idea, a very non-Judeo-Christian idea, that God created such and such time, and he did everything, and then we came on the sixth day, we saw what had already happened, and then we tried to figure it out for the rest of history. Report an error

2:12:49 And that was the initial premise for the pioneers of modern scientific revolution. They're trying to view, they're trying to know the mind of the creator by way of the creation. What's God's own perspective on his own creation? And they try to emulate them. Stephen Hawking, in his book, this last one, The Grand Design, isn't it? I think it's the title. Then he kind of blows that out of the water and says, you know, there isn't one universe and there's not one history of the universe. Report an error

2:13:12 There are multiverses, but they're all arising relative to systems of measurement. And there's no one absolutely true history. Now, can you make mistakes? Can you come up with a fantasy history that has no validity at all? Yeah, of course. It's called fantasy. It's called psychosis. It's called hallucination. But within the realm of valid observations, relative to valid observations, valid measurements, a sensible question, are there multiple histories of the universe? Report an error

2:13:38 And Stephen Hawking's answer is, yep, there are. And then he sums that up by saying, you can choose your own past. You can choose your own past by choosing the questions you want to ask and how you ask them. So if you ask a physical question, if we look at the history of modern science, and then more specifically, the last 135 years of the history of the cognitive sciences, a very recent newcomer on the block, we'll see that since Galileo, and with a few little hiccups with William James for about 25 years, 35 years, with the introspectionist movement, apart from that, it got smothered. Report an error

2:14:17 The questions scientists are asking are physical questions about the physical universe. And if you ask a physical question, you're going to get a physical answer. That's just the way it is. And so hence, if you pick up, which I have done, histories of cosmology, I mean books on cosmology that describe the entire universe from the Big Bang to the present moment, and I have studied this, you'll find... Report an error

2:14:50 You'll find that there may be no reference to the mind at all. The Big Bang, the cosmic inflation, formulation of matter, distinction of matter-energy, formulation of larger compounds of matter, galaxies, and then life in galaxies, and evolved life in galaxies, and here we are, human beings. And I've read books like this. There's no reference to the mind at all. Like, you know, mind, whatever. It came out of biology. Report an error

2:15:17 Don't worry about it. It's insignificant. Because you're asking a physical question, get a physical answer. Is mind physical? No. There's no physical attributes, can't be measured physically, so it's kind of like a, it's not physical stupid kind of moment. But that's the story you get if you haven't asked a whole bunch of physical questions for 400 years. Report an error

2:15:37 And then what can you do besides be a materialist? Because you've been asking material questions. And if you never practice introspection, if it never becomes legitimate, never incorporated in the scientific study of mind, which is one of the stupidest things ever done in the history of humanity, not actually... Report an error

2:15:53 Include observations of the mind when you want to understand it. Then you wind up being materialist. And you don't think you're even a materialist. You think you're a realist. It's very, very strange. It happened to psychoanalysis. It is there. There's no question about it. Interesting conversation and it does play a role. But now read the newspaper any day of the week. Report an error

2:16:14 The mind is the brain everywhere. Just look anywhere. The mind is the brain. They don't refer to Freud. The mind is the brain. The mind's the brain. And who are you? Epiphanon. At most, you're probably just an illusion. And your mental experiences, epiphenomenal. They're what the brain does. So if you want to know what's really going on, study the brain. Report an error

2:16:37 Stupid. It's everywhere now. It's the air we breathe. So I'm not dismissing psychoanalysis. But now look for it. Nowhere to be gone. And of course, even in psychoanalysis, like a Buddhist monk will spend maybe 5,000 hours training, just for starters, in introspection. Psychoanalysis, not quite the same. Report an error

2:16:56 We keep it at an amateur level. That's why it's so easily disparaged and dismissed. And, you know, they'll say, but look, it's so misleading. You're just backed and come up with all kinds of, you know, just letting it blow it away. Sure, but you can also blow away folks like folk astronomy. It's called astrology. That's easy to blow away, too. Keep it at an amateur level. Of course you can blow it away. But great contemplatives, and now it's not a sectarian statement at all. Report an error

2:17:19 Accomplished contemplatives, Christian, Taoist, Hindu, Sufi, Buddhist and so forth, they've done what modernity hasn't done at all. Spent 10, 20, 30, 40,000 hours honing introspection to a razor sharp edge and make valid, replicable discoveries. So it's an interesting point, but now let's come back to empathetic joy because time is running out. You just went down memory lane twice and what I'm sure you found was not much data. Report an error

2:17:50 Especially when you go back to childhood. When I'm trying to think of all the nice things I did when I was a teenager, it's kind of like, I'm Report an error

2:18:00 sure there was something there, but I think I forgot it. And of course, I wasn't a terrible person through all my teens. I wasn't just going around and pulling the wings off of flies every single day between the times I'm beating up on my brothers. And I wasn't that bad. I must have been something good, but I can't remember. I took my brothers out to bird watch one day. I remember that. It was kind of nice. Report an error

2:18:22 You know, took him out for a nature walk. That's what I did in my teenage years. Once. So what is this telling us? That our memories are wildly, ridiculously selective. And of course, some of them are fiction. We come up with memories that remember things that didn't even happen. But even when we remember things that did happen, boy, how slender, how cartoonish. Report an error

2:18:46 And how ridiculously selective. How many experiences did I have as a teenager? How many people did I meet? How many times did I do something? And what can I remember? Report an error

2:18:59 So there's this lovely phrase, and it's not from Buddhism. It's a phrase from psychology, and I really like it. And now related to Stephen Hawking, John Wheeler, another great physicist in this field. Report an error

2:19:15 Related now. Remember that one? The past does not exist objectively. The past arises relative to your questions. And system of measurement, here's a statement from psychology, it's never too late to have a happy childhood. Report an error

2:19:32 It's a fascinating area. It's deep. I mean, we just laugh at it, but it's actually very deep. When we bring in quantum cosmology here, which is not a trivial new age kind of thing, Stephen Hawking, John Wheeler, John Wheeler's not so well known, but Richard Feynman is. It was Richard Feynman at Caltech and it was John Wheeler at the Institute for Advanced Studies. These were the two great pillars of American theoretical physics in the latter half of the 20th century. Report an error

2:19:54 They were big, they were great, they were not New Agey or frivolous people. So it's not to say that therefore this theory, quantum cosmology, is absolutely true, but certainly it shouldn't be whisked away like it's some kind of ridiculous New Age notion. It's not. And the more I've studied it, the more I hold it in awe. I think it's incredibly profound. But of course, thus far, just a final note on that, thus far, it's a brilliant theory, and I've written on it multiple times, including in my New Balance book over there. Report an error

2:20:20 Thus far, though, it's not made much impact for a very simple reason. It's a brilliant theory and they don't have any way of testing it. This opposed to the average interpretation of quantum mechanics or the Schrödinger wave. There are many interpretations of quantum mechanics, the Copenhagen theory and so forth. But they don't lend themselves to empirical repudiation or verification. And if they don't, you'll really not be able to sustain the interest of a scientist very long. Report an error

2:20:45 Because they're looking for scientific theories that can be tested and not just really cool, interesting ideas. I mean, really good scientists. And so, therefore, it's out there, published in an excellent period of physics journal. I just, I'm not a physicist, I don't know everything that's going on in there, but I've just not seen much, many repercussions coming out of it. Report an error

2:21:05 And for a very simple reason, how do you test it? How do you test it? I'll tell you how. Meditate very deeply. Actually, I'm actually serious. You could test that, but only if you really bring in sophisticated means of developing the mind, probing the nature of consciousness, and running experiments. Report an error

2:21:21 Relativistic psychology. Then you can actually come up with something. So the Buddhists have methods for that. So I think one of these days we'll see some deep collaboration between physicists and deeply realized Buddhist contemplatives and the sparks may fly. It's never too late to have a happy childhood. So if I should ask every one of you right now, please write a one-page summary. Report an error

2:21:43 Just tell me what your past, what's happened in your life. One page. Just give me the most important points from your earliest memories till now. And one page, one page essay. I'm the school teacher. One page essay. What's happened in your life until today? Everybody can do it. Everybody can do it. I've done it. I've often been asked to write little bio sketches. Write a bio sketch in 100 pages. Report an error

2:22:09 Or 100 words. Very, very common. Bio sketch in 100 words. Okay, 200 words. 50 words. Tell me your life. 50 words. You're coming to this conference. They want to know who are you. So you do it. So what have you done when you do that, when you write me your one-page synopsis of what happened in your life? I'll tell you what you're going to write. You're going to write to me what you've been paying attention to. Report an error

2:22:31 Now, if it's a professional thing, okay, then you're going to highlight professional aspects. But if I say, no, no, I'm not a professional. I am a spiritual friend. I'd just like to know what happened in your life. So no professional agenda. Just tell me what happened in your life. Then you will write what you've been attending to. You won't write about what you're not attending to. Report an error

2:22:49 You will write about what you think is significant, what you've paid attention to, and therefore you remember. And if I ask you to write one page, that's what you'll write. And if I ask you to write a thousand pages, that's what you'll write. Because even a thousand pages is ridiculously selective. It would be how many volumes upon Encyclopedia Britannica times ten. If you said, this is what really happened. On March 25th, 1964, this is what I had for breakfast. Report an error

2:23:16 And you lay it all out in detail. Well, okay, whoever wants to read that book. Never have time because you have to keep on writing the new chapter every day. And that's going to take you much longer than a day. So that's not going to happen. So when we think of our past, we are drawing on extremely selective memory. Report an error

2:23:34 And we are in a mode in history from the media, as we all know so well, and many other ways. And probably, again, a biological imperative. We tend to remember negative stuff. Not only the negative stuff. Report an error

2:23:53 Negative things that happen to us, we remember quite vividly. Negative things we've done to other people, that really may catch our attention. The father who kills his children makes the headlines. The mother who takes wonderful care of her children, we don't mention that, even though it happens a million times more often than a father who kills his children. Report an error

2:24:12 But that will make the headlines. We all know that. So that's how we're conditioned. For the news, for our engagement with reality, I'll tell you as a teacher. If I'm giving a lecture, I say, just a lecture, to 50 people, and afterwards people come and, imagine this, this is hypothetical, imagine 49 people come to me after the lecture, to 50 people, and they say, Alan, that was a wonderful lecture, I found it very helpful. Report an error

2:24:38 Another one, oh, it's a brilliant lecture, that was really, 49 people really like it. And then one person comes and says, Alan, that was a ridiculous lecture. That really stunk, what were you talking about? I found it was totally stupid. And prejudice, and you're kind of like an advantage. You're so dogmatic. I wanted to walk out, but I didn't want to be rude. But I think now's my chance. That really sucked. Report an error

2:25:02 So I've just heard for 49 people just laughing, buttering up. And then one says, you're a total asshole. And I go home. Report an error

2:25:17 There it is, you know, and I don't think I'm all that unusual. That's just how we're programmed. Remember that one, and then the other one's a wash. You know, it's kind of, again, this one could kill me, and the other one's won't. So I think I better remember that one. That one may be dangerous. The other one, I don't have to worry about them, they like me. So there we are. Well, as we do that for other people's responses, we do the same thing internally. Report an error

2:25:42 When we screw up, when I say something I regret, now it's internal. And I know this is true. If I give a lecture for one hour, and every sentence except one was a sentence that I feel meaningful, well-motivated, helpful, and so forth, and I make one statement that was just ill-conceived, maybe there was, whatever, wrong. Report an error

2:26:05 Stinks. Afterwards I remember that one. Report an error

2:26:11 Shouldn't have said that. Shouldn't have said that. It happened in Phuket. I gave a lecture for two hours and I made one comment that lasted maybe 30 seconds and afterwards I thought that was inappropriate. Report an error

2:26:23 So that never appeared on the podcast. I deleted the whole lecture because it was inappropriate and I don't want to send that out to a thousand, two thousand people. So I scrapped the whole lecture and I have no regrets. I have no regrets about that. Report an error

2:26:42 So, in this regard then, where there's low self-esteem is what it's based on. Selective memory. We remember the negative things that we've done, our failures, our lack of successes, our mistakes, so forth and so on. That's what we remember when growing up. People say, how was your childhood? It was terrible. It was traumatic. It's miserable. Report an error

2:27:08 That's what you remember. That's in your selective memory. That's what you're highlighting. And you're defining yourself by that personal history. But are you aware that that's one out of a thousand? And you chose that one, maybe involuntarily, but nobody forced it on you. Nobody rammed it into your mouth. Voluntarily, consciously or unconsciously, that's the life history that you chose. Report an error

2:27:32 And the interesting thing about it is that history continues to influence you, like the person who relives, relives, relives, relives a trauma. It keeps on whacking the brain, it keeps on whacking the psyche. You get beaten up 50 times having been actually beaten up only once. So the past keeps on influencing us, right? Report an error

2:27:49 But it's a past that we selectively attend to. So the manner in which the past influences us is actually in the palm of our hand. Report an error

2:28:00 Even though the past is finished, but we have no access to that past. None, apart from the measurements we're making in the present. The questions we're posing in the present. How often in the course of your life, if I'm not asking this really, but here it is, I'm letting the questions just dangle in the air, how often in the course of your life have you just gone through memory lane and selectively targeted the acts of kindness shown to you by other people over the course of your life? Report an error

2:28:30 How often do you do that? On a regular basis? Once a week? Once a year? Once a decade? Might it be useful to balance things out again? In a world where we do, internally, tend to focus on the negative. Externally, we focus on the negative. In the media, focus on the negative. That's not realistic. Report an error

2:28:51 And so it's never too late to have a happy childhood. I've quoted that a number of times, just in the last retreat in Phuket, where I just came from. One fellow about my age, he came to me, so we meet every week for our 15-minute meeting. And he came to me during the retreat, and he was just so effusive. I mean, just bubbling over happy. Report an error

2:29:14 And he said, Alan, you know, you said in a retreat back in his homeland. It wasn't in this retreat. You know, you made a comment some years ago in a retreat you led in the country where he lived. You made that statement. It's never too late to have a happy childhood in the context of empathetic joy. And he said, you know, I had a really rugged childhood. Report an error

2:29:34 The relationship with my father was really brutal. And I've suffered from that my whole life. And you made that comment. You talked about empathetic joy. And it's changed everything. That statement's true. It's never too late to have a happy childhood. You just have to work at it. You have to selectively go back to your childhood and remember things you don't normally remember. Report an error

2:29:57 But they're there if you look for them. You can start focusing on those. And then it's not, again, putting on rose-tinted glasses. Buddhism doesn't really do that. When it starts out with the first noble truth of suffering, you know there's no rose-tinted glasses anywhere in reach because it's putting your nose in suffering. Report an error

2:30:14 And then after you're done, then it goes to put your nose in mental afflictions, craving, hostility, evil. So there's no rose-tinted glasses here anywhere in sight, right? It's pretty realistic. So it's not going there. But we are, on the one hand... Deliberately attending to, choosing to attend to, the kindnesses that other people have shown us, but then not so we just feel overwhelmingly indebted to everybody, like as if a great burden, but we have the second half. Report an error

2:30:45 Another thing that we often don't focus on much, and that is as children and adolescents, adults, when you get closer to the past, imagine you, like myself, can probably remember more acts of kindness, virtue, and so forth, you brought to the world. I can. Report an error

2:31:01 easier for my 50s than for my teens. Life has changed, but also, you know, there it is. So it's probably true for you, too. you've tried to think over the last ten years, if you've done anything good, I think you have plenty of material to work there's a person in the room. It's not true for you. And so... Report an error

2:31:20 not only highlighting things that we often overlook, which does start to reshape our memories of the past, and as it reshapes the memories of the past, it reshapes how the past influences us. Now that's interesting, isn't it? Because the past is water under the bridge. It's already happened. It's carved in granite. Nothing to be done about it. True and not true. Report an error

2:31:43 Sure. There's one side that won the Napoleonic Wars, the other side lost. Can't remake that one. But it's also true that you can influence the way the past influences you now by attending to different versions of the past which have equal validity but may have been overwrote. But it's not only balancing out. This is important. Report an error

2:32:07 If we've been focusing on the negative, and I see that tendency in my own son. Difficulty with my father. Many sons have had that. I'm one of them. He's not a bad father, but I do recall events that I think he regrets. I know he doesn't, but there are some. Report an error

2:32:25 But then when I go back, when I really go back, then I can see actually these acts of kindness just overwhelm the blip here and there that were mistaken. So that's balancing out. That's good. It's just realistic. Report an error

2:32:41 That we don't bring this cognitive bias, highlighting, remembering, and then hammering in the negative. But there's more to it than that. That's just good. It's kind of common sense that we often overlook. But there's more to it than that. When we look back on people who have mistreated us one way or another, family, friends, and so forth, strangers, people in business world, we look back and say, because I'm thinking of something right now, that woman, my wife and I treated her only kindly, homogenously, never anything other than kindness. Report an error

2:33:16 Honesty, straightforward. And after a, what was it, a long time, 11 years professional relationship, she robbed us blind. And when I complained, she said, if you complain, I'm going to rob you more. It's really quite, quite bold. I'm not going to elaborate on it. But what she did was really wrong. She just robbed us. And then threatened to, you know, get back us more if we took her to court. Report an error

2:33:39 She said, oh, then I'll accuse you of doing this. And she's saying right to my face, I'll accuse you of having done this, which of course she knows I haven't done. I know I've not done. But she'll say, you know, I'll get you. I'll get you. So pretty sinister, right? So whenever I, if I think about that, I can say, well, she was wrong. She was wrong. She was 100 % wrong. Report an error

2:33:55 My wife and I are 100 % right. We did nothing wrong at all. That was 100 % wrong. So we're good and she's bad. Except that just makes me feel bad. Report an error

2:34:07 I feel the kind of resentment. And I don't like that. I don't want to be carrying around. It won't Report an error

2:34:16 give me negativity. I don't care for that. I don't choose that. So then I can go back again to exactly the same. same situation. I know that, in fact, there was nothing whatsoever. In this particular case, other cases have done something a bit wrong or maybe very wrong in this retaliation. That happens. Report an error

2:34:35 Then I say, okay, I have to take some responsibility there. In this particular case, this was actually black and white. She was really wrong. We didn't know anything wrong at all. So there it is. What do you do with a black and white case? Report an error

2:34:49 You go back and say, why would she do something like that? Because I don't think she disliked us. It was nothing personal. She just took an opportunity to get money that she didn't deserve, and she took it. Why would she do that? She's single. She's lonely. I sense some really significant low self-esteem. Report an error

2:35:10 I Report an error

2:35:14 think a lot of loneliness there. A lot of alienation there. Report an error

2:35:21 Anxiety there. Financial. I've experienced loneliness. I've experienced anxiety. I know what low self-esteem is like. And then that brings out the worst in people. Financial straits. I've seen it time and time again. It brings out the worst in people. And she knew that my wife and I were Buddhist. We're nice people. So probably an easy target. Report an error

2:35:44 We're probably not going to shoot her, blow Report an error

2:35:49 up her house or something. Probably not. If we're of another faith, she might be a little bit more itchy, but the Buddhists, they're soft touch. They're supposed to be peaceful. Report an error

2:36:00 Easy target, probably no risk. So Report an error

2:36:07 she took it. So now who is worthy of greater sympathy? Me? I lost the money. I actually had no impact on our lives at all. It wasn't that much. Report an error

2:36:20 Who's more deserving of sympathy? Report an error

2:36:28 It doesn't justify what she did. What she did was wrong. Report an error

2:36:37 Much greater compassion for her than my loss of a bit. A few thousand dollars. And then the mind becomes soft and just wishing, I wish you well. Report an error

2:36:49 An insecurity there, a failure to recognize right and wrong. That's not going to serve you well. And doesn't there some shame there? You know that you treated people badly who treated you well. How does that sit? That your heart happy? You bring joy every day when you wake up? You be free of suffering and the causes of suffering. Report an error

2:37:12 So now we're going back to the same event, which is very easy to remember, because I'm not usually gypped, robbed, cheated like that. It doesn't happen often. And then instead of being bitter, feeling if I ever see her again, I'm going to make an angry gesture or something, anything like that. It's just, now I see it differently. Report an error

2:37:29 And that was my choice. It's my choice if and only if I know I have a choice. And that's what education should be about, education generally. Give people choices where they don't see there's a choice. If they're studying science, here's the science. You have a choice whether to be a materialist or not. You don't have to be. If you like that, if you're drawn to that, you think it's meaningful, coherent, compelling, go for it. Report an error

2:37:54 But you do have a choice, you know. You can be a neuroscientist, a physicist, anything. You don't have to be a materialist. That should be a choice. You can be an evolutionary biologist and not be a materialist. There is a choice, but only if you see there's a choice. So I feel that quite passionately. So we come to empathetic joy. You see the sequence, and now we're about to wrap up. Report an error

2:38:16 The near enemy, the false facsimile, is infatuation with hedonic pleasure. This is frivolous pleasure. That's what Buddha Gosa, 1500 years, called it. But infatuation, total fixation on hedonic pleasure. Thinking, this is it, this is where my happiness lies. I just want more. Well, you look really joyful. Report an error

2:38:37 I'm enjoying life. I just made another million. I'm so happy. I just got another mistress. She's fantastic. Life is good. And I just bought her a ring and she's really happy. You know, so it looks like empathetic joy. You're taking delight in all your pleasures and so forth. And it looks like empathetic joy. It's not. Report an error

2:38:57 Its distant enemy is when it's targeted, when it has a very specific focus, its envy. Where as you're attending to the virtues, the successes, the joys of others, you can't stand it. That that person doesn't deserve it. That person did nothing to deserve that kind of prestige, that kind of status. Well, good luck. I can't stand it. Report an error

2:39:22 I should get that. I should have that kind of renown. I should have that. Not you. It's gall in my mouth. I can't stand it that you have that kind of joy. And so many people admire you. That's the opposite of empathetic joy. And it's targeted. You know, Jack over here and Jill over there. They shouldn't have it. I should have it. Australia should have it. Not Indonesia. Report an error

2:39:45 They don't deserve it. So that's where it's got a real clear target. But sometimes instead of being a clear target, it just kind of like goes supernova. It just goes the antithesis of empathetic joy. So no particular target. It goes. Bah! Reality at large. You suck. It's called cynicism. Cynicism is the opposite of empathetic joy. Report an error

2:40:09 But it's gone generic. It's gone global. It's gone viral. That there's no will virtue in the world. People are just showing off. We're basically crappy people. We're animals with a lot of malevolence and greed and selfishness. And that's human nature. And I know it. And it sucks. I don't like myself either, if I give you any satisfaction. Report an error

2:40:28 But people basically suck. Animals suck more. They're even more. bestial than we are, they're still better. There's no real virtue in the world. It's just human existence. You have to bite. You know, we're animals. What can you expect? And when you see virtue, it's not. He's just showing you. Oh, he's got an agenda. He's always got an agenda. You know, those people that seem to be so nice. Oh, he's got an agenda. He's got an agenda. He's got it. Okay, that's cynicism. Report an error

2:40:56 Opposite of empathetic. But now it's gone viral, generic, in no direction. There's nothing to take delight in. That's it. Report an error

2:41:06 So that's the four enemy and its proximate cause is seeing other people's success, their joys, their delights. You see it, triggers it immediately. And it fails when it produces a mere enemy, frivolity or disfixation, non-hedonic. As we've noted before, when compassion falls to its near enemy, it succumbs to its near enemy of depression, despair, hopelessness. Report an error

2:41:36 Empathetic joy is the remedy. And this whole issue of being balanced by love and kindness, I'll get to that a little bit later. So the final word, as we have one minute, is... What's that? It succeeds when... Oh, it succeeds when. Good point, very good, thank you. It succeeds when... There's a pattern there, and I know it, even though I don't have to remember, I just know the pattern. Report an error

2:42:02 It succeeds when any trace of envy or cynicism subsides. Thank you, that's really good. So we may have at least some tendency to be envious towards somebody on some occasion. But when even that subsides, or on occasion we'll feel kind of getting into a cynical mood, well that will happen less. And envy will happen less. Report an error

2:42:23 So good, thank you, that's really good. And then, keep it even. Keep it even. Have no reservations about rejoicing in your own joys and virtues, any more than you do about the joys and virtues of others. It's squeaky clean, it's very, very good, and hardly anybody talks about it. And a final point before we take off, and it is final, and that is... Report an error

2:42:44 Among the four immeasurables, this is the one that often gets overlooked. Equanimity is so important because you leave everything out, and then love and compassion are like, you know, they just roll off the tongue. Everybody knows they're good. Empathetic joy, what was that one again? The third one often gets shuffled out. And I doubt that there are many people who are sitting down on a regular basis, daily basis, and meditatively cultivating empathetic joy. Report an error

2:43:10 I'm not sure, excuse me, how many people will do it from here. It's really good to do. But then we have this, it's a market Dharma place. And that is, there are many types of meditation that call for your attention and you're going to give that which you feel is most beneficial. So this one often gets, well, we learned it's very, very good, we tried it once and now move on and I'm practicing shamatha, I'm practicing loving kindness, I'm practicing donna and I'm doing, you know, some other practices. Report an error

2:43:33 This one often gets overlooked. So I'm not griping about that. I think it's a valid observation. And time is limited. When you have 40 minutes a day formally on your meditation cushion, This may not quite make the cut. Very good, but there are a lot of things maybe a bit better that catch your attention more. But here's what I would suggest as a final note. Report an error

2:43:54 And that is among all the practices here, this one really invites us to bring the practice out into daily life where we're socially engaged. It really invites that. As we're engaging, just taking a walk and keeping, having the antenna up, so to speak, with a question, with an alert, with... Report an error

2:44:14 As you're going out for a walk, you're going to school, you're going to business, you're going to the workplace, whatever it is, keep your eyes wide open with a question. And that is, the question is, is anybody out there happy? Report an error

2:44:25 Anybody finding any joy, any success, anything good going on in the world at all? Like little kids walking a bicycle on the sidewalk? That was something. I remember it now, ten years later. Because I focused on it, I gave attention to it. Anything else without a once-off, without a kind of one-time only. Attending to, there it is, that wonderful verb, attending to the joys in the world, attending to, lingering there, taking delight, expanding your soul, the field of caring, that you actually can get joy by proxy. Report an error

2:45:01 Another person having joy, and you get joy, and you didn't take it. They're not deprived. In fact, if they knew that you're taking joy in their delight, that would make them happy. We all know that's true. If other people take a lot of joy in their own success, they say, oh, I have a friend. So that and then in the same breath, is there any virtue out there or is it all just what the headlines say? Report an error

2:45:25 Parents killing their children, one more bombing, one more stabbing, one more blah, blah, blah. Any virtue out there at all that we hear of, that we see, that we experience? Any virtue in here at all in our own lives of what we're bringing to the world? Anything to rejoice in? Anything? Anything? Report an error

2:45:43 And then you can turn your life into meditation and find so many things to take delight in. On that point, I remember a study done some years ago, very, very well established, the question for pure psychology, straight psychology. Report an error

2:45:56 Happy people, there are people who are really quite happy. Why? What makes them happy? And so we take the obvious one, is it because they won a lottery? And the studies are in, the data are in. When you win the lottery, you get a big spike, the kind of big quick spike of Yahoo! And then the spike goes down and you have anxiety and paying the bills and everybody wanting your money. And so the level of your overall happiness basically is untouched. You used to be just paying all your bills and had no anxiety and now you've got a lot of money and you're no happier than we were before. Report an error

2:46:26 So why did you buy that lottery ticket? So a lot of people will become your friends. And so there it is. Some big happening, like whatever. It's probably not going to have very little impact. Well-being, some spike of success and so forth. So what is it that makes people happy? What are the characteristics? And this is in the world. This is not yogis, dharma practitioners and so forth. Report an error

2:46:53 And the answer is really simple. It's straightforward and it's unequivocal. People will find many things to take delight in over the course of the day. The other ones who are happy, many things, small things, a whole bunch of small things. And that's because they're attending to them. They take delight in them. Those are the happy people. They may be relatively poor, middle class, upper class. Rich can do this too. Report an error

2:47:13 The people who find many, many events throughout the course of the day to take delight in. Those are the happy. Report an error

2:47:25 Enjoy your break. Enjoy your meal. See you at 2 o 'clock. Report an error

Report an error

Passage at . Please listen to the audio before you suggest a fix.

Suggest a fix

Passage at . Please listen to the audio before you suggest a fix.

Related talks

  1. Four Immeasurables Retreat with B. Alan Wallace - Sydney 2014 (part 16)

    B. Alan Wallace · 2014 · 2 h 41 min

  2. Four Immeasurables Retreat with B. Alan Wallace - Sydney 2014 (part 13)

    B. Alan Wallace · 2014 · 3 h 2 min

  3. Four Immeasurables Retreat with B. Alan Wallace - Sydney 2014 (part 4)

    B. Alan Wallace · 2014 · 2 h 47 min

  4. Four Immeasurables Retreat with B. Alan Wallace - Sydney 2014 (part 12)

    B. Alan Wallace · 2014 · 2 h 46 min

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

    B. Alan Wallace · 2014 · 2 h 49 min

  6. Four Immeasurables Retreat with B. Alan Wallace - Sydney 2014 (part 2)

    B. Alan Wallace · 2014 · 2 h 11 min

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.

Recorded at Vajrayana Institute, Sydney, and archived by the institute on Internet Archive. More from Vajrayana Institute

Listen on Internet Archive · CC BY-NC-ND 3.0