← B. Alan Wallace

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

B. Alan Wallace · 2014 · 2 h 41 min · Vajrayana Institute via Internet Archive

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  • 1:13

    Now this afternoon for this first session, I'm engaging in a shamatha practice that has no target. And a fair number of people, when they venture into this, and even after they've tried it a number of times, say, I can't do it. That's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. And I'll try to make that obvious. I'll try to do it with words first, and then we're going to go right into the practice. The practice of shamatha, unlike the practice of Vipassanā, unlike the practice of the four measurables, unlike the practice of Vipassanā where you're closely attending to the body, feelings and so forth, unlike many types of meditation, shamatha is really going into retreat.

  • 17:53

    Do nothing. Because you're not doing anything when you're simply being aware of being aware. It's just be, be, not do, do. And so that's all that's left. When you stop doing, unless you pass out, then your explicit awareness just, you know, gets zapped, you're going to deep sleep. But as long as you're still aware, then when you're not doing anything at all. Literally not doing anything at all. And what's left over is being aware. But you are being aware all along. So the notion that you can't do it doesn't wash.

  • 22:56

    Pristine awareness, real consciousness. Dharma dhatu, perfect symmetry. The same in all directions. Transcendent. Absolutely transcendent. It's nirvāṇa. But here we are at the snowflake of our minds. So we know what they say about snowflakes. They say everyone's unique. I doubt that they've checked that.

  • 45:24

    being aware, really sharp. releasing it into space, gently sustain the awareness that is already there, and that is the awareness of being aware. Arouse and release, arouse and release. With each arousal you, you dispel any trace of laxity.

  • 1:38:55

    It would certainly work out. So that's equanimity. Let's come back a little bit before the

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0:31 moved in right next door. that is when we're attending to the of the mind during the intervals between thoughts. Report an error

0:43 more of an absence of thoughts and then we had our exploration for what it was there's still something that we're attending to that is there is a directionality our attention I'm attending to the space of the mind, and that's that domain where thoughts and images arise. I'm attending to it and I'm asking whether it's three-dimensional, two-dimensional and so forth. So it still has a target. It's a very intangible target, but it's still a target. Report an error

1:13 Now this afternoon for this first session, I'm engaging in a shamatha practice that has no target. And a fair number of people, when they venture into this, and even after they've tried it a number of times, say, I can't do it. Report an error

1:34 That's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. And I'll try to make that obvious. I'll try to do it with words first, and then we're going to go right into the practice. The practice of shamatha, unlike the practice of Vipassanā, unlike the practice of the four measurables, unlike the practice of Vipassanā where you're closely attending to the body, feelings and so forth, unlike many types of meditation, shamatha is really going into retreat. Report an error

2:04 It's a withdrawal. When we're cultivating the four measurables, that's not a withdrawal at all. We're attending to or coming out of our skin. And attending to other people and so forth. When we're attending to the body of ourselves and others, attending to feelings, that's not a withdrawal or retreat. That's an expedition that's venturing out, seeking to understand, to explore. Report an error

2:25 So truly an expedition, a contemplative expedition. But shamatha by nature, and there are a wide variety of methods, shamatha by nature is retreat. So you're going into retreat. And both of these, I like these two phrases, these two words a lot. I used to not like the notion of retreat because I felt it had a quality to my mind at that time of failure. Like if you're going into battle and then you have to go into retreat, that means you lost. Report an error

2:52 But I've gotten over it. I now like the word retreat. Because if you're going into battle and you're just getting beaten up, the smartest thing is to do is to go, not to be routed, not to throw your rifles into the air and run for mama. But rather make a strategic withdrawal, regroup, re-strategize, replenish, get more supplies and then live to fight another day and maybe win the war later. Report an error

3:17 So retreat is sometimes just the smartest thing to do. And likewise in our day-to-day life, sometimes life gets the better of us. Sometimes we get mugged. Sometimes we find the situation just too much. Like, you know, time out. I've had it. Just give me some space. Right? Sometimes we want to say that's the reality as a whole. Report an error

3:37 Or maybe to a spouse, or maybe to, you know, in the workplace, what have you. Or it's just too much. We just get mugged. We can't, we feel we can't rise to the occasion and do so in a meaningful and helpful, beneficial, good way. It's just too much. I've been in situations, not common, not often, and not so much recently, but I do remember having been in situations where they've just, I can't handle this. Report an error

4:00 And so what's the best thing to do? Retreat. So shamatha is a retreat. Shamatha is a retreat. From the vicissitudes of saṃsāra, the ups and downs of saṃsāra, it's a retreat from the good days when we respond with attachment and a retreat from the bad days to which we respond with aversion and hostility and anger and resentment and saying, you know, I'm not doing very well on either account. Report an error

4:30 When a really nice thing happens to me, I go like a little Pac-Man and want to munch it, munch it, munch it, munch it and grab onto it. Old, old pattern of craving, attachment, self-centered attachment. And then when things go rotten, I get upset, I get into resentment and take on the victim role. Oh, poor me, poor me. In other words, I'm just blowing it on both accounts. And then when it's neither good nor bad, then I'm bored. You know? And I'm just like, what? Report an error

4:56 So I'm basically just playing variations on the theme of delusion, craving and hostility. And this isn't working out so well. You know, the hedonic game. And so one might think, I'm going to try another game, and that is I'm going to retreat from saṃsāra for a while and see how that works out. And so saṃsāra, well, okay, this phenomenal world with all of its attractions and nasty things that happen to us, its felicities and adversities. Report an error

5:24 And shamatha is by nature. Shamatha is by nature always selective. If it's not selective, it's not shamatha. And it's by nature withdrawal. It's by nature withdrawal. And so we can start. Here are our senses going out of the world, the birds chirping and so forth and so on. They say, well, okay, there's such a great big messy world out there, no boundaries, and it's all attractive, unattractive or boring. Report an error

5:46 So I'm going to withdraw from that. And so we practice, for example, the mindfulness of breathing. Nice, really, not for everybody, but for a lot of people, a really nice entry level into Shantideva. And when doing that, when you're attending to the sensations of the respiration, whether in the whole body, the abdomen, Report an error

6:06 You've just made a major retreat because you're not deliberately attending to any visual impressions, any sounds, any smells, tastes. You're not attending to anything outside your body. That's a big retreat. Your body's relatively small and the rest of the universe is pretty large. That's a major retreat. And while you're in session, you're basically saying whatever's happening outside of my skin, I am not for the time being interested. Report an error

6:30 Maybe my motivation is utterly benevolent. Maybe it's bodhicitta. To achieve enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. But in order to do so, for a little while, I'm going to be total retreat and just, how do you say, contain my attention within my skin, inside the body and within the body, attempt at the breath. Report an error

6:46 That's a retreat, big time. Very good method. Put it on it a lot. So in that context then, the object of mindfulness is what? It's the sensations of the body, sensations of the breath, the respiration within your body. Whether full body, abdomen or here. But whatever, it's not outside the body, it's within the body. That's the object of mindfulness. But now I hope it's very, very familiar to you that when you're practicing shamatha, developing your attention skills, it's not enough to develop mindfulness. Report an error

7:15 Not enough. Any more than if you started a car company, it would be sufficient just to make cars. There has to be some quality control there. Somebody has to be checking to see whether the merchandise, when it's going out the door and being sold, is it up to standards? Is it not? You have to do a major recall and the whole company goes into bankruptcy. And so there has to be quality control. There has to be a monitoring. Not just practicing mindfulness, a monitoring mindfulness. Report an error

7:43 So that if it starts to go awry, you're aware of it. Because one can develop bad habits in meditation as much as any other activity. And then they become deeply ingrained and then you've got a big problem on your hands. The habit of just sitting there going daydreaming, daydreaming, daydreaming and not even putting any check, the habit of just spacing out, getting dull and complacent and not even any check, then it's not meditation, just wasting time and actually waking time with a bad habit, which becomes more and more deeply ingrained the more we do it, like any other habit. Report an error

8:12 And so the introspection at other mental faculties is crucial. If you're not implementing it, you're not practicing Shantamata. So what are you looking for? Of course, you're looking for laxity, excitation, but in practicing introspection, clearly you do have some awareness of what's going on in the mind. Report an error

8:28 Is there a lot of chatter going on? Is it getting dull? Is it uneasy? Is it anxious? Is it cheerful, content? You have to be aware of what's going on in the mind. So your attention is primarily focused on the sensations within the body, but you're coming in orthogonally from the side, back from the side, and you are monitoring. Report an error

8:46 Your mind, to some extent. Enough, anyway, that you keep the mindfulness honed and your attention balanced. But now when you're observing anything, whether you're observing the sensations in the body, whether you're observing the mind, there's another type of awareness that's part of the package, and it's not voluntary. Report an error

9:06 It's already there. This is a core element of Buddhist philosophy. Tsongkhapa articulates this with great clarity, unpacks it with a great deal of philosophical sophistication, I believe. And that is, for example, I'll just look over at Yoliska. So there's Yoliska. Report an error

9:24 Two grey-haired ladies, you know, I've seen one, you see them all. Yoliska. So there's Yoliska. And so, as I'm attending to Yoliska, I'm aware of her facial expression, her clothing and so forth. There's a visual perception of Yoliska's form, and of course I'm mentally aware of Yoliska as well. But there's another kind of knowing that's going on simultaneously. Any guesses? Report an error

9:50 What's that? Awareness. Awareness? Awareness of what? Awareness. That's right. It's true. It's indubitably true, isn't it? I don't see how one can debate it. When I am clearly, cognizantly aware of Yuliska, I'm also aware of being aware. I can't get around that one, not be aware of being aware, but being aware of Yuliska. It's a package deal. This is what Tsongkhapa says, that whenever aware of anything, part of the very process of being aware of anything whatsoever is there is at least an implicit awareness of being aware. Report an error

10:23 That's a proposition. You don't have to believe it. But it's pretty compelling to my mind. Let's imagine it's true. And I'm going to imagine it's true because I'm sure it's true. Report an error

10:34 In which case then when we're practicing mindfulness of breathing, object of mindfulness is sensations of the breath, introspection, monitoring the mind. And in addition, there's a third tier, a third level of awareness that's going on, and that's just the awareness of being aware. Now let's keep on the trajectory of the last five and a half days. Report an error

10:54 You say, all right, this has been good, very soothing, very calming, very relaxing, but I like balancing earth and wind. Okay? Earth and wind. So I like settling the mind as a natural state. So let's imagine you do that. And now you're single-pointedly focused on only one domain, domain of the mind, of course. Report an error

11:12 And in so doing, to the best of your ability, you're not giving any attention to the body or any of the sensory fields, the visual, auditory, and so forth. Now, they'll take some. Your body will impinge. Sound, vision, they'll be almost like taxing you. They'll be biting out, taking little bites. But you don't give any deliberately. And what you're giving your attention to is just that single-pointed focus on the mental domain. Report an error

11:38 And that is the space of the mind, which you may especially attend to during the intervals between thoughts. And then, of course, thoughts, all the players on the stage. But you retreated further now. You retreated entirely away from the physical world altogether. Because you're not deliberately giving attention even to your own body. And when you go very deep in this practice, you're not even aware of the body when you go really, really deep. Report an error

12:01 So it just fades out altogether. But what fades in, what rises up, is the space of the mind and its contents. So you've gone deeper into retreat, retreating even from your own body. Report an error

12:14 And then what becomes now with your awareness so channeled, so focused on that one domain, that cinema of the mind, that gets really high definition. Very, very clear. And as you're attending to the thoughts, images and the space itself, there's something else going on. And Michael Popp, right? Michael, correct? Chris, Chris Popp. Yes, thank you. So as Chris pointed out, and so say it again, Chris, what else are you aware of when you're attending to the space of the mind and all the stuff that's arising in it? Report an error

12:48 Awareness. You have no choice. It's built in. You are... Still aware of being aware. Even if it's not very explicit, you may be very interested in some thought or emotion, very keenly interested. That's fine. That becomes very explicit. But you're still, there is still an awareness. Still an awareness. Well, now we move into the next session, which we'll start shortly. Report an error

13:11 You say, I'm not finished retreating. I'm going to retreat more. I'm going to withdraw not only from the world around me. That's a lot. And not only from my body. That's pretty prominent. I'm going to even retreat from my mind. Report an error

13:27 And that means every aspect of my mind. All the activities, the memories, my sense of identity, Alan Wallace, man, Eric, and all that kind of business. My personal history, my language skills, every other skill I have. Every mental factor that I have that's part of the coarse mind, our ordinary functioning psyche. Report an error

13:46 I'm now not going to even be interested in my own mind. I'm not going to give my own mind any attention. All the activities, all the stuff, all the processes of the mind. Okay, I've given them time. I've given enough. I gave it the office. And now I'm going to withdraw from that too. And so whatever's happening in the mind, space of the mind, take care of yourself. Report an error

14:10 I'm going on vacation. I'm going into retreat. And we withdraw the awareness away from the space of the mind. Whatever's happening there, withdraw from there as well. So in terms of the stillness of awareness and the activities of the mind, well, the activities of the mind... Have a nice time without me. Do your own thing. But I'm not going to give you any attention for a while. I'll come back. In which case now you've retreated from your mind. Report an error

14:37 And now, what's left? Chris. Pop. Awareness, yeah. Thank you. This is a nice choreograph here. But the point here is that was there all along. So I like to call this the meditative striptease. Report an error

14:57 Monk, except for plugs in the monks here. But it is. It's a meditative striptease. Because first, our awareness is clothed, garmented with all the juicy stuff of the world. The sights, the sounds, the colors, the smells, the tastes. Heavily clothed, right? Enveloped. But then, throw it off. We're getting more naked. We're down to raw flesh, you know, just basic flesh. You know, the body. And then, out goes the body. And then, out goes the mind. Report an error

15:33 And now you're stripped buck naked. That's how we say it in America. Your awareness is now just naked. No adornments. No male, no female, no human, no non-human, no personal history. No, just stripped down, naked, raw, basic, essential, luminosity and godlessness. It doesn't have any identity. It's prior to identity. Whoever you think you are, it's before that. And whatever you think you, whatever happens at death is after that. Report an error

16:07 You're going to die. That person's going to die. There'll be a memory and then no longer a memory because memories fade. But the awareness, it will still continue. That stripped down naked version, the unconfigured version, not configured by your biology, your genetics, your personal history, language, acculturation or anything else, stripped down naked. Report an error

16:30 And so as we venture into this practice momentarily now, if you tell me afterwards I couldn't do it, I'll try to find something soft to throw at you. Maybe this. Okay? I'm not a violent man, but look out. I'm going to throw something at you. And you tell me, I can't do it. Because what I'll tell you is you've been doing it all along, and I was giving you less to do, not more. Report an error

16:55 So how can you tell me you can't do it when you were doing it, when your mind splattered all over the world, attending everything, and you were still doing it when you were practicing mindfulness of breathing, and you're still doing it when you're settling the mind as natural state, and I'm just saying, don't do any of the other stuff. Report an error

17:11 It's a process of subtraction, not a process of addition. You're not doing something more than you were doing previously. You're doing something less. And in fact, you're kind of doing nothing at all. And that's what catches people. Because when they think they're meditating, they're told to meditate. They've traveled, maybe traveled from far distance. They paid a fee to participate in the retreat. Report an error

17:33 They want to be good students. And so they hear a new meditation and say, OK, let me out. What do I do? And the answer is, that was too much. Report an error

17:42 Yeah, but you say, but it can't be that easy. I didn't come all the way here to do nothing. It took a while to get there. But, yeah, that's what we're here to do. Do nothing. Because you're not doing anything when you're simply being aware of being aware. It's just be, be, not do, do. And so that's all that's left. Report an error

18:03 When you stop doing, unless you pass out, then your explicit awareness just, you know, gets zapped, you're going to deep sleep. But as long as you're still aware, then when you're not doing anything at all. Literally not doing anything at all. And what's left over is being aware. But you are being aware all along. So the notion that you can't do it doesn't wash. Report an error

18:26 It means you're asking the wrong question. Yes, you're not doing it. That's the idea. But you are being aware all along. And you're watching this incredible array of birds here. I've never been to one place that has such a variety of birds. It's quite extraordinary. That's doing something. But when I'm watching all those species of birds, I'm still being aware all the way along. So you see, this is actually quite simple. But what it entails is being able to release all the doing, release the striving, release the expectation, and just recognize the sheer raw simplicity. Report an error

19:00 Let's do it now for 10 seconds, and then we'll start the practice later. But for 10 seconds, just do what we've done a number of times previously for 5 or 10 seconds. Just sit there and don't do anything at all. And be aware of being aware. Report an error

19:27 And that's it. You can't say you can't do it. It's what's left over when you're not doing anything else. So when you get the taste of it, it's very satisfying. Report an error

19:43 The method is not deep, but you're going into very deep waters. It's not my depth, it's not Buddha's depth, not the technique's depth. You're going into very deep waters. I like to think of, I've been to a lot of volcanoes in Hawaii and elsewhere, and you can go right into the... You have the dead volcano, the dormant volcano, right? You go right into the middle of it and pitch a tent. When Report an error

20:11 that volcano blows, you'll know about it because you put yourself right where it's going to blow, right if it gets active again. You will not have to discover or develop a volcano. You will discover a volcano because you put yourself in the right place at the right time and the volcano will rise up to meet you and it will melt you. Report an error

20:35 And that's what happens here. The ordinary mind is said to be crystallized. It's a very common metaphor in Dzogchen, the Great Perfection, that our ordinary minds, our functioning dualistic grasping minds, were frozen. It's a beautiful metaphor from cosmology. It's Report an error

20:58 called frozen. Do you remember? Alan, it's frozen. But it's the whole notion of the universe moving from a state of fluidity, perfect symmetry. I remember Steven Weinberg writes about this and others as well. But in terms of cosmic evolution, the universe evolving from a state of symmetry. There's no differentiation between matter and energy and so forth. Report an error

21:24 And then the symmetries, there's a whole sequence of symmetry breaking. And so that which is symmetrical, that is homogenous, in all directions the same. Then in the cooling of the universe, as the universe evolves after Big Bang, then there's multiple symmetry breakings. And the universe starts to crystallize into energy here, matter there, particles here, fields there. And then more and more crystallization, more breaking of symmetries until you have the world that we experience, which is very clumpy. Report an error

21:52 A galaxy here, a galactic cluster there, an atom here, a planet there, now all clumpy. And that's the frozen universe. It's a beautiful metaphor. The mind that we experience now is a frozen mind in the sense that it's crystallized. You know, I'm over here. I'm over here. The cloud is way over there. Like that. And this is mine, but this is not mine. But that's mine, but this isn't mine. And that's not mine. That can be mine as much as I want. Report an error

22:21 And so, you know, like, okay, everything is in its place. Everything's locked in. The practice of settling the mind in its natural state is to melt. To melt your coarse, dualistic, grasping mind into this substrate consciousness, which is not pristine awareness. It's not a state of perfect symmetry. It's a beautiful word. The parallels with modern physics are quite stunning. I wrote a whole paper on it a long time ago. The perfect symmetry, the absolute symmetry, is right there in the ground. Report an error

22:56 Pristine awareness, real consciousness. Dharma dhatu, perfect symmetry. The same in all directions. Transcendent. Absolutely transcendent. It's nirvāṇa. But here we are at the snowflake of our minds. So we know what they say about snowflakes. They say everyone's unique. I doubt that they've checked that. Report an error

23:17 It sounds like a nice idea. Just too many of them, right? But maybe it's true. Why not? So every snowflake is unique. That may very well be true. What I'm certain is true is that the mind of every sentient being in the universe is unique. That one I have no doubt about. It's not possible for any two minds to be the same because they can't be in the same place at the same time and they can't have the same life trajectories, the same memories. Report an error

23:41 They can't be configured in exactly the same way, otherwise they'd be the same. So the mind of every sentient being is unique. Like they say snowflakes are. That's a configured mind. A rising dependence upon a unique brain and so many other things that are completely unique. But when you settle the mind in this natural state, by whatever means, including the one we're about to go to, then the uniqueness of your mind, your gender, your personal history, your gifts, your flaws, your virtues and so forth, all that melts. Report an error

24:11 All that melts. Your very sense of identity, which is unique, melts, melts, gently melts. You allow it to melt. You're not torching it until your whole sense of identity based on your body, your mind, your personal history, all that just melts and it melts into the substrate consciousness. When you melt there consciously through the practice of shamatha and you come home, you come to this relative ground, not ultimate, but relative ground, you come to rest there in clear, luminous cognizance, which is non-conceptual. Report an error

24:45 And this has been done so many thousands of times. It's one of the oldest experiments that's been run and confirmed. On the face of the earth. When you come there, then what you find when you come to your relative ground state as a sentient being is the experience of being you, the experience of being resting in that mode of consciousness. Report an error

25:05 Blissful, surprise, luminous and non-conceptual. Three qualities, blissful, luminous, non-conceptual. And it doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter who you are. Old, young, fat, skinny, wealthy, poor, whatever. Human or non-human. Because this is prior to human. This is more primal than human versus animal versus anything else. You come down to that level and whoever you are, wherever you are, whenever you are, what you're experiencing there at that primal level coming down to the ground of your saṃsāra. Report an error

25:39 It's blissful, luminous, non-conceptual. So every snowflake is unique, but every H2O molecule is just the same. H2, two H's and one O. Report an error

25:52 Two hydrogen, one oxygen atom, and you've got yourself a standard issue water molecule. All look the same. It's kind of like that, on that level. So if you're content to release everything you're attached to, personal history, possession, reputation, and everything else you're attached to, this is going to be a joy ride. Report an error

26:18 And it comes to bliss. This is really good news. This is not a hypothesis. I mean, it's a hypothesis for us who have not tested it. But it's not a speculation. This is really old news. It was known long before the Buddha, Hindus nailed this one centuries ago, millennia ago. Report an error

26:35 If you're not attached to all your stuff out here, and you're not attached to your stuff here, and you're not attached to, and I'm going to point to my heart like the Tibetans do, if you're not attached to your mind, your intelligence, your memory, your creativity, your memories, memories, memories, if you're not attached to those, and you're not attached to your concocted sense of personal identity, who you really think you are, if you're not attached to any of them, then it's a joyride. Report an error

27:03 And the greatest news here, one of the most important discoveries that hasn't been made by scientists, is that your ground state is blissful. Who would have thought? Report an error

27:13 Because there's no stimulation at all. If there's any stimulation, if there's any surrounding, what's your environment when your mind slips into or dissolves into the substrate consciousness? What's your environment? It's called the substrate, the alaya. And what's the substrate? A sheer vacuity. It's not emptiness, not shunyata has, not any of that. Report an error

27:31 It's just a sheer vacuity. It's what you're aware of if you fall deep asleep and you're lucid. A whole lot of nothing. A whole lot of acuity. That's your environment. There's your awareness and that's your environment. So it's kind of like that's about as little stimulation as you can possibly get. And that's where the greatest bliss is. Son of a gun. Report an error

27:53 And people have tasted that. Jujum Lingman and so many others say, boy, if you tap into that one, you're not going to want to come out. To come out and have sex? Oh, how sloppy, gooey, messy. I got better than that and without all the excess. Report an error

28:08 You like thrills? You like riding a motorcycle at 160 miles an hour? Do you like extreme sports? Do you like horror movies that just make you scream? Do you like anything else that just gives you an incredibly intense sense of being alive? This is better. It's luminosity, naked, clean, raw luminosity. It's quite a buzz. You like serenity of living in a very well-protected house, really good alarm system, excellent health insurance, etc. Report an error

28:39 You like to be really, really safe? You like serenity? You like peace? You like to go up the mountains in a cabin that's all by itself, away from all danger? Report an error

28:50 This is real serenity. This is real peace. Real quiet. Peace and quiet. Core, essential peace and quiet. So no wonder people get stuck there. Report an error

28:59 Because all the things we go out into the world for, in our search for pleasure, for bliss, in our search for thrills and excitation and intensity, in our search for peace and security, all our movings around the world in search of these, Report an error

29:13 Because they're all along, but we're looking in all the wrong places. So this is kind of good news. That in fact, all the pleasure we experience in the world through whatever source, enjoying having a good reputation, sensual and so forth and so on, where's that pleasure coming from? Not from reputation, otherwise all the famous people would be happy. Not from the wealth, otherwise all wealthy people would be happy. Where's the pleasure coming from? Report an error

29:40 From your substrate consciousness. Where else? Not coming from objects. It doesn't come themselves. They don't spit out bliss. They're chemicals. Don't blame them. They're chemicals. And then the intensity, the luminosity, the thrill, the sheer experience of being alive, vibrantly, wildly alive. Where does that come from? Quite a high. Drugs will do it too. Where's the high? Cocaine I've never tried, but I need your real buzz. Where's that coming from? Report an error

30:07 From the coke? It's a chemical. It comes from your substrate consciousness. And when we feel very secure, serene, calm and peaceful, where's that coming from? From the mountains? From the lake? From the cup of hot cocoa? Report an error

30:20 You know, you can only come from one source. So you've come to the source of all that you've been striving for all along. You're resting there. And it's all in one package deal. It's simultaneously blissful, luminous and non-conceptual. That's pretty sweet. And it didn't cost anything. It didn't cost a nickel. Report an error

30:38 You just have to learn how to do the method. You can learn that from a book. You can borrow the book. And it doesn't cost you anything at all. Or you can listen to podcasts. They're free. And you'll learn everything you need to nurture from the podcast. How to do that. Free. Report an error

30:54 That's what Shantideva is about. So let's find out. But you can't say you can't do it. You can find a comfortable position. Report an error

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32:12 Release and relax into the meditation, settling body, speech and mind in the natural state and calming the mind for a little while with mindfulness of breathing. Report an error

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35:55 But in the space in front of you, Report an error

36:09 simply be present without focusing on any object, without meditating on anything, without directing your attention here or there. Report an error

36:23 Just be mindfully present, alert, clear and discerning. Report an error

36:30 Resting in the present moment, there's nowhere else to rest. Report an error

36:37 And simply sustain this flow of mindful presence from moment to moment, without distraction, without your awareness being pulled away to anything, without grasping, without latching on to any object, any appearance or anything at all. Report an error

37:02 Mindfully present in the present moment, Report an error

37:08 resting in its own state, holding its own ground, Report an error

· · ·

39:28 attention, any object, Report an error

39:36 clarity, that you are aware of something, even when you're not aware of anything else. Like the sun rising over the horizon behind you. And something just gets clearer and clearer as it rises above the horizon. The light comes on. You may become more and more explicitly aware of what you are already aware of, at least implicitly. Report an error

40:04 And in the awareness of being aware. So as that dawns on you, that there is a knowing here. And the knowing is the knowing of knowing. The awareness of being aware. Rest there. Sustain that non-conceptual, unmediated. Knowing, which is the awareness of being aware. Rest there. Let your interest be there. Stay home. Report an error

40:50 Now that you are not aware of being aware unless you have fallen asleep. If you can hear my voice, then you are aware of being aware. So simply don't do anything else. Report an error

41:01 Strip down to your nucleus. Awareness. Report an error

· · ·

41:54 Strengthen the qualities of relaxation, stability and vividness. But not this method. This is pure discovery. By releasing or grasping the sense of ease. spontaneously. Report an error

42:25 shroud awareness because we don't grasp onto and identify with Report an error

42:33 don't need to add anything to it or develop anything where to become clear is already clear. Report an error

42:42 let the qualities of relaxation, stillness, and vividness rise up to For some people Report an error

· · ·

43:56 the altitude here is a bit high. Easy to get spaced out, disoriented. We're out of the comfort zone, into unfamiliar territory, but there's nothing to hold on to, not even the wind. Report an error

44:14 So we can step back a little bit, a bit more in the comfort zone, if you find it helpful. And the comfort zone is while resting your awareness in its own nature. Report an error

44:27 Maintain a peripheral awareness of something you're also aware of implicitly, and that is the fluctuations of the breath. It sets a rhythm. It may be helpful for a while. Report an error

44:41 As the breath flows in, rise, focus, concentrate your awareness, withdrawing your awareness from all appearances. Take a keen and sharp interest in the sheer, unmediated experience of being aware. Intensify. Report an error

45:01 As the breath flows out, relax, really ease up in the body, the mind, everything, release, relax, loosening up. Don't space out, but just deeply relax with every open. Report an error

45:16 Flows in, concentrate, focus, Report an error

45:21 elevate and accentuate your awareness. being aware, really sharp. Report an error

45:33 releasing it into space, gently sustain the awareness that is already there, and that is the awareness of being aware. Arouse and release, arouse and release. With each arousal you, you dispel any trace of laxity. Report an error

45:53 With every release, that core really existential letting go, you release from the core, the agitation, the excitation, the turbulence. Report an error

· · ·

47:27 Whatever thoughts arise, don't pay them any heed. Don't observe them. Don't release them. Don't do anything to them. Let them be that your awareness rests in its own place and those thoughts will dissolve of their own accord without any help, without any assistance. It's like fireworks arising in the sky. You don't need to hose them down. They're going to vanish all by themselves. But don't be carried away by them. Report an error

47:58 Release grasping. That you really wear one task here. Stay awake and release all grasping. And Report an error

· · ·

51:26 simply rest doing nothing whatsoever. Being aware, being aware of the awareness you're already aware of, rest right there. Luminous, Report an error

· · ·

57:52 embodying, personal history, memories, thoughts, aspirations, visions of the future, basically everything that defines us as an individual. Insofar as one's not attached to any of that, then this trajectory of shamatha, it's a joyride. Report an error

58:11 But of course, most of us do have a fair amount of attachment to that. And so in the course of doing this kind of practice, or frankly any shamatha practice, if you persist and go deep enough, you're going to find the bottom falls out at one point, or multiple points, where suddenly you feel all adrift, everything familiar is gone, including your sense of identity. Report an error

58:32 And if you're still attached to that, then the emotional response will be existential fear, fear of annihilation, what will become of me, what has become of me. And you'd be clawing to find something to hold on to, get back on familiar ground. Better the devil you do know than the one you don't know. And so in that regard, this path can be quite fraught with fear. Report an error

58:56 And it's nothing that one smiles about when one is experiencing. It's actually very intense, very real. And it is real. It's Report an error

59:07 not reality-based. That is, the fear is not coming from the object. The fear is only coming from the disillusion of the familiar. Which is actually the source of our torment. If you go back to elemental Buddhism, why are we so fundamentally prone to suffering? Because we are identified with our body and mind, and then everything that goes with it. Report an error

59:27 Possessions, family, memories, and all that stuff. Clinging tightly, holding tightly. This is my refuge. This is who I am. This is where I am. Holding tightly to that, then we're just inviting all of the universe, hurt me. And it does rise to that challenge very frequently. It doesn't come from having a body or a mind. Report an error

59:47 That's not the problem. Fiercely, tenaciously, and in a way. Reifying fashion. And so it's our security. But it's like clothing yourself in a barbed wire garment and saying, this is really protecting me. Report an error

1:00:04 And then being fearful if somebody tries to strip the barbed wire away. But you're taking away my only clothing. That's my protection from the world. And you hug it tighter. So this happens a lot. I've been teaching this for a long time. Even back to 1988 when I assisted in teaching or leading the one-year retreat. There was one woman in the retreat. Report an error

1:00:23 A very, very dedicated, very sincere, good heart, a great heart, and very ethical, also a very fine person. And earlier in her life, much earlier in her life, because she was a middle-aged woman at that time, she practiced Zen in Paris under a Zen master there. Report an error

1:00:41 She went into meditation, and she went into kind of just this sheer dropping away of everything, and it just terrified her. No smiling about it, it just really terrified her. It was like, there's annihilation, there's the extinction of me. And it's just truly terrifying. And she just pulled out, hit reverse and go, pedal to the metal, out of here. Report an error

1:01:06 It was a traumatic experience. Sometimes traumatic experience happened because something happened to you from outside, this one from something happening to you inside. Or rather the falling away of everything that seems to protect us from trauma, to give us that sense of security, of home, of place, of identity. Report an error

1:01:23 And so she bore that memory for a long time. This was in 1988, probably happened 20 years earlier. But the memory was always there, and she stopped practicing Zen. She got into Tibetan Buddhism, where we have so many wonderful bells and whistles. So many things to hold on to. Visualizations and mantras and special clothing. Report an error

1:01:44 It's très chic. Report an error

1:01:49 You know, and a special haircut, too. I mean, you get all kinds of frills. When you enter into Tibetan Buddhism, let alone the bells and the vajras and the chanting and the liturgies, you can even wear costumes on occasion. And so if you want to hold on to something, Tibetan Buddhism gives you it in spades. Report an error

1:02:05 So many things, so many, so baroque, so lively, so colorful, lots of fun. So when you get really caught up, when you're really caught up in all the pomp and pageantry of Tibetan Buddhism, it gets so deeply embedded in the culture, it's hard to pull it out. Report an error

1:02:22 Where's the Buddhism? Where's the Tibetan culture? Because they grew together. They kind of fused together for 1,200 years. So it's sometimes not so easy to disentangle. What's this culture? Where's this actually Buddhism? And we're not talking about the Theravāda canon. We're not talking about the Pāli canon as if that's a real Buddhism. I don't believe that for a second. It's real, but that's not all there is to it. Report an error

1:02:41 So it's not that. But nevertheless, she got into Tibetan Buddhism very developed, very sincere. And then she signed up for this one-year shamatha retreat. Well, I'll tell you, there were just no bells and whistles at all. We gathered for one week. Well, again, Lama Rinpoche, a presiding yogi, gave the core instructions for the whole year. Report an error

1:03:03 I translated it for him. One of you bought the book, Calling the Mind. That was his teaching, his one-week teaching at the beginning of the one-year retreat. And you see there's no bells and whistles there. It's just straight, naked, raw. Here's shamatha. And you want to add some ritual to it? Well, then knock yourself out. But it's not part of the practice. Report an error

1:03:22 Some people by and large are practicing mindfulness of breathing, some practicing settling the mind, some practicing awareness of awareness, and one or two are practicing doing a visualization practice. Report an error

1:03:32 By the way, that didn't work out very well. That's not to say that it doesn't, but in that case it didn't work out very well. Whereas I mentioned there were a number of people practicing mindfulness of breathing. One of them was that woman who wound up practicing 14 hours a day in two sessions. That worked out well. And in any case, back to this woman. Report an error

1:03:52 So she and I had a very nice relationship, good Dharma friends, and then when she met the yogi, great reverence, he was a splendid human being, fine, fine yogi, very loving, compassionate. He was everything he wanted in a yogi. She had a good connection with him, very good connection with him, and he's teaching. So everybody hunkers down, 12 people, senior teacher, I'm there, and then a nephew of the yogi. Report an error

1:04:15 He was also there as kind of a backup interpreter. Nice group. But get about two or three weeks into the one-year retreat. I think you know what's going to happen. No bells, no whistles, no rituals, no nothing. Just, hello, here you're on the cushion. Report an error

1:04:31 Here's your mind. Everything fell away. It happened deja vu. She stopped meditating for the rest of the year. Terrifying. Report an error

1:04:43 The yogi was right there. I had been practicing for, what is that, 18 years? I wasn't quite a novice. So we had two good spiritual friends there to help her in any way we can. He warned everybody. Before, during that first week, he warned everybody in the retreat. He said, because he'd been meditating for like 25 years at that time, in full solitude, full bore, that's what he was, he was a yogi. Report an error

1:05:06 He said, during the course of this year, on occasion when you go deep into meditation, terror may arise. And you're going to have your work cut out for you when that happens. Because when it arises, you're going to find this enormous pull, almost like getting pulled into a, what's it called, an ocean. Report an error

1:05:29 Whirlpool, yeah. Kind of like it's going to take a lot of effort not to get sucked in. When this existential terror rises, it's the terror of annihilation. When that comes in, you're going to have to be not strenuously swimming in the different direction. You're going to have to release. You're going to have to release all grasping, all identification with the terror. Report an error

1:05:51 Not easy, but that's exactly what's needed. There is no other way. That's what's needed. If the terror rises and you're going to need to observe the terror, Not identify with it. Observe it with intelligence and know there's nothing there to be afraid of. It's Winston Churchill laughed all over again. Report an error

1:06:08 There's nothing to fear. Was it he or FDR? There's nothing to fear but fear itself. FDR? FDR, yeah? FDR, there we are. There's nothing to fear but fear itself. Well, that's exactly the case here. If you're afraid of the fear, you're going to be freaked out. But if you recognize this is not a reality-based fear because there's nothing here to harm you. Report an error

1:06:27 There's no danger. The fear has no referent. You're not in danger. So you need to recognize the fear and see that it's empty. Just like you look at bliss and see that it's empty, the fear is a great big balloon that's completely empty because there's no fist behind it. There's nothing that's going to whack you. There's no danger. There's no harm. So he said it. And then it happened two weeks later. Report an error

1:06:56 The déjà vu came in. He was completely absorbing the fear and just wouldn't go back in again. So she found ways to spend her time over the rest of the year. But she certainly avoided shamatha meditation. Just couldn't go there. Report an error

1:07:13 So he also said one other thing. He said many things, but one I'll just mention now, in that first year. Speaking as this was his first trip to the West, and prior to that visit, I was pretty much the only Westman he'd ever met. Because he's not out and about in the cloud guns meeting and hobnobbing with Westerners. Didn't speak English, so he had nothing to say anyway. And number two, he's an hour and a half hike up the mountain living by himself with a loose-knit cluster of other yogis in their huts and they don't talk much with each other. Report an error

1:07:40 And so when I was his next-door neighbor, then he got to know me, so I was, I am the West, by the way. Hello, I'm Western civilization. That's pretty much what he knew about Western civilization, this skinny American monk. and so then he came he came there to The Washington state up in the Pacific Northwest. And then he met 12 Westerns all at the same time. But he's coming from a thoroughly traditional Tibetan culture where spirits, all kinds of spirits, they have a tremendous array of spirits, non-physical entities, beings, sentient beings that populate the earth. Report an error

1:08:16 They are as real for a traditional Tibetan like him as viruses, bacteria, electrons, gravity are for us. Many of us haven't seen anything that I just talked about. Have you ever seen a virus? Et cetera. But who here doubts the existence of them? And for very good reason. There are people who do see them. And we trust them. They're called biologists and so forth. And so for Tibetans, they said, we do have yogis who have seen these spirits. Report an error

1:08:44 They have heightened awareness. They can see a broader bandwidth of reality than ordinary people can. They're the experts. They put in 15, 20, 30 years of meditation. They can see things we can't see, just like scientists can. So what's the difference? And actually there isn't any difference, because if they do put in the training, then you can see these things yourself. But the point being, I'm not trying to give a big pitch for spirits, but I am saying that for Gen Lamrimpa, the existence of demonic forces and so forth were as real as butterflies and pine cones. Report an error

1:09:11 And so he said, in the course of this practice, you may experience demons, evil spirits, assaulting you. And if you do so, then do the same thing all over again. Don't reify them, don't grasp on them. Don't grasp onto them. Simply see them as empty appearances. Don't freak out. They won't harm you if you don't reify them. So similar to a non-lucid dream. Report an error

1:09:34 Become lucid, nothing in the dream can harm you. Become non-lucid, anything can harm you, even though there's nothing there. So he warned about, you know, you might have demonic apparitions when you go very deep in meditation, but, you know, chill. Nobody did, because all the meditators were Westerners. Report an error

1:09:54 But little demons like arrogance and other things, those demons came up. And so that's a little background on that. But one can see again why the fear would arise. Perfectly obvious. Because if you follow the trajectory of shamatha, like in the practice we just did, here's a metaphor I like. Just what happens when you just sit there doing nothing, but you do so with great clarity and discernment? Not spacing out and not just getting caught up in an array of thinking, obsessive and compulsive thinking. Report an error

1:10:22 Well, it's like you just rest there. And during that one year, again, Lama Rinpoche and I lived together in the same house. We had a lot of conversations. And he's done this practice. And I'd already done the practice somewhat, but a bit more advanced than that. And he said, when you just are resting there in the awareness of awareness, at the beginning, it's kind of like there's no fireworks. It's not like no, wow! Report an error

1:10:45 It's kind of like, oh, okay, I'm aware of it. Does it get any better? Is something going to happen? Let's wait. Wrong attitude. Don't wait. It's already happening. But nothing spectacular usually when people start the practice. It's kind of clear, it's calm, it's simple. But he said, then what happens? Report an error

1:11:06 Because he's speaking from years of experience. What happens if you just rest there doing nothing, but in that very specific way? Then the sheer luminosity, the sheer cognizance of awareness, just starts to shine brighter and brighter and brighter and brighter. You're not doing anything, but it just rises up to meet you. Report an error

1:11:24 So with greater continuity, that's the stability. Greater luminosity, that's the vividness. And so Shantideva rises up to meet you. So the substrate consciousness rising up to meet you as your coarse mind, your psyche, is melting into it until there's nothing left of your psyche and all that remains is your substrate consciousness, that stem cell consciousness. Report an error

1:11:48 So it all happens to you as if by grace, but nobody's doing it to you. There's not somebody else out there kind of giving you something. It's your own substrate consciousness rising up to meet you, to engulf you, to melt you. Report an error

1:12:09 There was something else, but I think that'll do for now. Oh yeah, that point. Simple point. So, in this trajectory of lucidity, because you're starting out with cognizance, and the cognizance just gets clearer and sharper and sharper and sharper, so you're just radiantly cognizant. And bear in mind, the whole process is non-consexual. That it's a mode of knowing from the beginning that is non-consexual. Report an error

1:12:31 It's not caught up as much as possible, not caught up in a conceptual mesh. So you're making sense of it, thinking, figuring it out, oh yeah, I'm getting it. No, it's a level of knowing that we already have, but we usually veil and bundle up and adorn and configure with all of our thoughts, memories, language and so forth. Report an error

1:12:49 And so we're throwing off those garments and what's left is the kind of knowing that's always been there, but it's naked, raw, non-conceptual and immediate. And that's what you get used to. That's what you familiarize yourself with. You sustain, and then the cognizant aspect of that just becomes sharper. The luminous act becomes brighter, and all the vestiges of your personal identity that have come to you. Report an error

1:13:12 Wherever there's acquisition, there's loss. Wherever there's meeting, there's parting. Your sense of identity is something you got, which means you're going to lose it. It arose, therefore it's going to... Report an error

1:13:25 You came together with it and so you're going to part. That's just kind of built into nature. So when you're on this trajectory of lucidity, just an ongoing flow of cognance of knowing what's happening, knowing the nature of the reality you're experiencing right now, then your sense of identity is dissolving and it's melting away and it's vanishing. Report an error

1:13:46 If that sounds familiar, it should, because that's what's happened when you die. And some people, when they die, it's a really awful experience. Even before they're dead, just getting close to it's awful. And for some people it's just bland, and other ones it's joyful. So the dying is inevitable, but the way you die is not inevitable at all. Report an error

1:14:09 We are setting ourselves up from day to day of our lives to how we will experience the final day of our lives. And we're preparing ourselves for that one way or another every day. And so if the days of our lives before the last day of our life, if that's really just more and more deeply habituating ourselves with whatever's going on, your gender, your amount of wealth, your status, your prestige, your family, your possessions, your locality, your nationality, and all the rest of this stuff. Report an error

1:14:40 And if that's just getting reinforced, reinforced, up to the day of death, that's going to be tough. Because if you have a lot of wealth, you have a lot of wealth, and somebody steals your wallet. Report an error

1:14:55 Just your wallet. That's a bad day. Report an error

1:15:04 If somebody steals your children, kidnaps them, that's a really bad day. If somebody bombs your house, that's a terrible day. If somebody takes over your whole country and you have to flee into exile, that's a really terrible day. So there are many terrible days. And some people have multiple ones, a whole sequence of terrible days. But when you die, you have all of that wrapped into one. Report an error

1:15:26 You lose your house, you lose your nationality, your homeland, your children, your possessions, and even your body and even your mind. So that's a pretty terrible day. If you're attached to them, that's a really rotten day. That's the worst of all days. And you're losing everything you're familiar with, and now you're being plunged into something you're not familiar with at all. You're being catapulted into the unknown. Report an error

1:15:47 And that can just be awful. So dying can be no picnic, unless you've rehearsed well. So the end point, the trajectory, the culmination of the dying process in Tibetan Buddhism is when your mind dissolves into the substrate consciousness. That's the point when you're dead. Because the mind that arises independence upon the brain, finished. It didn't vanish into thin air, it withdrew into the substrate consciousness. Report an error

1:16:15 But you're dead. With the wonders of modern medicine, maybe they can bring you back. But if they can't, when you're dead, and it's irreversible, you're dead, dead. Report an error

1:16:27 And so it can be a lot of fear. Because everything you've identified with and everything you've been comfortable with is now gone. You're stripped down. And that's exactly where you're going in chief shamatha. So the fear that arises in the practice of shamatha is the fear of death. For very good reason. You're going to the same place. Or as you can see, if you can cheat death by entering into the same mode of consciousness when you're still alive, healthy, then you sabotage death. Report an error

1:16:57 You defang death. So when it comes your day, you come with that knowing. I know it's coming and I'm ready for you. And I'm going to take this final wave. I like the metaphor of the surfer. This is the final wave. This is the final one. The perfect curl. The ten foot wave. And you're preparing for it, preparing for it, preparing for it. And look behind you and here it comes. And I'm right in the right position. I'm all ready to catch this wave. Report an error

1:17:28 I'm ready to die. Report an error

1:17:35 It comes to the substrate consciousness, you're dead and you're lucid. Very good. And then the substrate gives way. It implodes, it falls away. Clear light of death. You may be ready for that too. Have you done a bit of Mahamudra Dzogchen? Stage of completion. So that the ride of your life, the culminating, the final, the grand finale. Or the loss of everything, the biggest disaster, you've lost the battle with whatever disease knocked you out. Report an error

1:18:06 And big end, failure, catastrophe, total loss, momentum, bummer. So that's where we're facing again. And that's why fear arises, inshallah. So now we move on to equanimity. Time's a move. Our last afternoon together. Report an error

1:18:30 And at the end of meditation, we just finished. Something came up. Good memory. The year 2000 was the Mind of Life meeting with His Holiness, of course. Paul Ekman was there. That was the one, a destructive emotion that Daniel Bowman and I, we organized. It's a wonderful, wonderful conference. And one of the speakers, not so well known, one of the speakers was a woman psychologist by the name of Ginny Tsai, a very lovely person, very fine psychologist, very bright. Report an error

1:18:59 And she is a Taiwanese-American, but she was born in Taiwan. And as a psychologist, she really focused on the distinctive qualities of Taiwanese culture and then was doing some comparative studies for traditional Taiwanese. Now, probably because you're close neighbors to Taiwan, probably all of you know this, but I didn't know it. Report an error

1:19:18 That when Chiang Kai-shek fled from the communists and brought his flotilla over, they're Han Chinese, they're foreign invaders to Taiwan. Taiwan was already populated, like in North America, when the white people came over and discovered it. Taiwan was heavily populated already by Taiwanese, they're not Han Chinese. And so these escaping Chiang Kai-shek and all his buddies, they come over in their boats and they come over and they take over. Report an error

1:19:42 They've got a lot of guns. People with guns tend to take over. Taiwanese didn't have as many guns as they did, so they just took over and said, okay, this is what? Nationalist China. And so then the Taiwanese became second-rate citizens in their own home. Boy, how many times has that happened? And so we have two cultures there going on, the invading culture of the Han Chinese, and then the Taiwanese culture, who had been there for a long time with a distinctive culture, and the Taiwanese being different from the Han, but the Taiwanese being also very different from people in the modern West. Report an error

1:20:13 And Jeanne Tsai was and still is a professor at Stanford University, and so she did a comparative study of just kind of psychological differences, attitudes, perspectives between traditional Taiwanese and, let's say, Americans. So that's what she gave her presentation on. It was very, very good, very clear, very sharp, very benevolently presented, truly a lovely person. But we saw that it didn't really catch the Dalai Lama's attention so much. Report an error

1:20:42 He wasn't particularly interested. It's a good presentation, that was indisputable. But when it was all said and done, he very candidly said, well, it's very interesting to see the differences between the Taiwanese and the Americans or Europeans and so on, modern West. Report an error

1:20:57 But to be quite candid, I'm much more interested in the common ground than I am in the differences. That's what really captures my attention. We see differences all over the place. The Muslims versus the atheists and the Anglos versus the Africans and so forth. The differences are in our face. They're everywhere. And they do tend to be accentuated. It's one more characteristic, I think, of the human psyche that we tend to highlight differences. Report an error

1:21:26 We're doing it for a long, long time. And it happens everywhere. It happens everywhere. So with this common ground, we kind of gloss over it with a difference, then we hone in on it. Report an error

1:21:38 And then that gives rise to all the inequities, all the imbalances, all the barriers that come up in the cultivation of loving kindness, compassion and empathetic joy. That these people over here are really, really nice and I really enjoy practicing loving kindness for them. But these people are really awful. They do terrible things. And I just can't feel loving and kind because they're different. Report an error

1:22:00 These people are easy. They're nice. They're friendly. They're virtuous. And these people are not. Or these people of this skin color, yes, or this religion, and so forth and so on. So all the barriers come up because of the differences. And when we're looking at appearances, brothers aren't even two people who are the same. Report an error

1:22:19 Not even twins are the same. As soon as you get to know them, even they are different. And so if you meet two twins, as you get to know them, you'll probably like one better than another. Report an error

1:22:29 Just their personality or behavior, the way they treat you. One twin might be a bit more aloof to you, a little more friendly. Report an error

1:22:35 Wherever we're going, whether it's looking at birds or mammals or human beings, old people, young people, Australians or New Guineans, what we keep on picking up is the differences. Report an error

1:22:48 And some of those differences are appealing, some of the differences are unappealing, and some are boring, giving rise to attachment, aversion and indifference. Report an error

1:23:00 So this final one is kind of accentuating what was in the background all along. It's important all alone as you're cultivating love and kindness. Break down the barriers, the barriers. Compassion, break down the barriers, barriers. Empathetic joy. Keep the joy flowing in all directions evenly. But we know it's hard because as soon as we open our eyes, things are not the same. People are not the same. Some are more appealing than others. Report an error

1:23:25 That's just the way it is and it's always been that way. The Dalai Lama is a more appealing person than Hitler. How do you spin that otherwise? Unless you maybe miss Von Braun or whatever. I guess she probably liked him. Report an error

1:23:42 So equanimity, it's a big challenge. Big challenge. Because we even attend to self and other, we see differences. And we tend to, once again, accentuate the differences, highlight the differences. And wherever there's differences, some are bound to be more appealing than others. It's built in. So how do you possibly develop equanimity, this even-heartedness, in a world that basically consists of inequalities all over the place, everywhere, at all times? Report an error

1:24:08 How do you do that? Clearly some people are more lovable than others, more attractive than others, in every way different from everybody else. So do you just kind of smooth that over? Do you kind of take some Buddhist icing and smear it over equally with vanilla? You know, just cover it all over, you know, Hitler, Mussolini, Nelson Mandela, Report an error

1:24:40 because the icing melts and then you see what was underneath it and you're back into the scene. Report an error

1:24:48 So in this practice, This is really a challenge for wisdom, for insight, for discernment. To see through the appearances, which are different in so many ways, to probe through almost as if you had some kind of an x-ray vision or some penetrating insight, which is a good translation for the pashana. Some penetrating insight to look through all the variations, the diversities of appearances and to cut through them, to acknowledge them. And the Dalai Lama commented on this when he responded to Jini Sai's presentation. Report an error

1:25:20 These differences are real. They're important to notice. We have to take them into account. And we can respect them. We don't have to be freaking out or get upset or uneasy when we see the differences between this person's belief system and this person and your own and the customs of this culture and the customs of that culture and so forth. Report an error

1:25:39 It's only totalitarian governments that try to make everybody the same, and they've been doing that for a long time. And it's also when church and state get merged together, like Constantine and... You know, the union of church and state under Constantine. What's the first thing to do when you have a decaying empire and you decide one thing to prop up your empire, the decaying Roman Empire? Report an error

1:25:59 You're looking for a prop. Where's a big band-aid? Ah, there's one. Christianity. Let's make a state religion and let's make sure everybody believes the same and that maybe could be a whole bunch of band-aids. To hold together an empire that's falling apart at the seams, into fragments, fragments, fragments, insist that everybody believe the same, follow the same ritual, follow the same pope, make sure that there's a hierarchy there, and the hierarchy insists upon homogeneity, orthodoxy. Report an error

1:26:29 That will hold up your empire for 50 years, but of course it was repeated many, many times. So that's what happens when it's union of church and state, or even no church, just state. So, how... Frankly, sympathetic is to the Chinese Communist government to heterogeneity in political views, philosophical views, religious views. Report an error

1:26:53 You can't stand it. You lose control. When people under you differ, and they differ from you, duck tape over the mouth, censorship of the Internet, censorship of the censorship. So, enough political commentary. It's very hard to maintain, though, what totalitarian governments have found. Or when authoritarian people of any kind, a father, an authoritarian father, tells his children, you will behave, you will conform, and then they're just splitting for the hills when they get to be teenagers, with a lot of hatred, work out very well. Report an error

1:27:26 So with the x-ray vision then, Report an error

1:27:31 perceiving and acknowledging the differences, and in many cases, not all, but in many cases, the differences can be respected. Their difference is okay. Now, some differences, no. If one person is a racist and other people are not a racist, no, actually, we don't want to tolerate that. So we'll not tolerate that in a non-violent way. So not all the differences are to be respected clearly. But many are. Many can be. Difference between Jews and Christians. Report an error

1:27:55 Both these traditions have been of tremendous benefit to millions of people. So Islam and Judaism, they coexisted for a long, long time with hardly any brutality at all. They coexisted. And each has its great strengths, its great nobility, its great heritage. It can work. They just forgot. They forgot. Report an error

1:28:15 But it can. In most of the history, they're not fighting each other. History of Islam, most of the history, getting along okay. And we forget the wisdom we already had. So many, many differences can be acknowledged and respected, even celebrated. The Dalai Lama is a wonderful paradigm of that as he visits religious leaders all over the world and just simply celebrates. Islam is Islam. Judaism is Judaism. Report an error

1:28:39 Hinduism is Hinduism. And it's absolutely sincere. He's really celebrating the differences. That's because he's so at ease, so totally at ease with his own worldview. No defensiveness, no anxiety when other people don't agree. Report an error

1:28:59 And likewise when you engage with scientists. I've never seen him nervous. I've never seen him nervous ever with anybody. When he meets most scientists, the kind of scientists that are selected to meet with him, they're almost all materialist. He doesn't agree with materialism. Report an error

1:29:17 But he doesn't let it get to him either. You know what he does? Because I've seen that. It translates it for many occasions. You know what he does? He seeks the common ground, the commonality. And they love him for it. Report an error

1:29:32 They think he's a bit bonkers. You know, some of them, not all of them, but some of them, they think, believes in reincarnation. But he's still such a nice guy. That's what they, I've seen that happen to him many times. You know, his worldview. Very superstitious, but he's so sweet. Report an error

1:29:54 So looking through the differences. This is equanimity. I have to develop some x-ray vision. Some of the differences are really very serious and harmful differences. The racist and the non-racist and so forth. Not to be acknowledged, not to be respected equally. But you have to look through it. The racist, take a non-controversial example. Report an error

1:30:18 Nobody here believes racism is good, so I think we don't have to debate that. There's the racism coming up. It's dominant. It's in the mainstream. But when you cut through that, you see the person wasn't a racist from birth. Not from birth. You had to learn that one. And the person isn't a racist every single moment of the day. Report an error

1:30:40 It comes up. It's almost like malaria. It comes up. Having a bout of racism. And then it subsides. And then it's kind of normal. Especially when they deal with people like themselves. Saying to King Cullen and all of that. Racism is not flaring up. It just flares up when they meet somebody that's not like them. But that means it's not all the time. So you cut through that. You see the person who's adopted or has been dominated by or seduced by this worldview or this attitude which is so detrimental. Report an error

1:31:06 But you cut through it to the person who's having a case of racism. That's a nice way of saying it. Who's having a case of racism. You cut through that. But that's the person who didn't have racism, has racism now, but will outgrave it sooner or later. Because you can't carry it through the grave. I don't think there are any beings in the bardo who are racist. Report an error

1:31:25 Like, oh, there's a darker bardo being. You must be inferior. I don't think so. I think you outgrow it. Until death do us part. But really, death does part you from the acquired delusions. Report an error

1:31:37 You lose your mind, you lose the barnacles of acquired delusion. That's kind of good. That's one of the upsides, the perks of dying. Report an error

1:31:46 I'm really enjoying this. So cut through that. Cut through. Keep on cutting through. Cutting through all the layers, all the accoutrements, all the layers that are like barnacles on the ship of the substrate consciousness. Keep on cutting through. And cutting through until you see, without any blemishes, without any variations, cutting through deep enough. Report an error

1:32:10 It's almost like cutting through cancerous tissue until you find some really healthy tissue. You finally get there and then you stop cutting. But there's some healthy tissue, a lot of cancerous stuff in between, a lot of malignant stuff in between, all kinds of stuff in between, but finally get something really healthy. Report an error

1:32:26 You cut through all the layers until you see someone who's just like you, at your core. Obviously not your face, not all the differences, but then how can you do that? How can you cut through to just like you, but not like you as an Australian male with a short haircut? Not that. Deeper or something, right? Report an error

1:32:47 How would you cut through to the commonality? For another person, if you've not done it for yourself, if you're so caught up and identified with the uniqueness of you, the uniqueness of you, and if that's all you think there is to you, is aspects that are unique, you're going to have a hard time with equanimity, because nobody's like you, which means nobody's equal to you, which means nobody deserves the same attention as you, because they're not you. Report an error

1:33:17 But if you are able to release your identification with that which is unique about you, gender, Nationality, level of education, level of intelligence, creativity, skills, gifts and so forth. If you're able to cut through that, in other words you actually have to do the x-ray vision on yourself first. Report an error

1:33:34 Get down raw and primitive, basic, I don't mean bestial, just raw, primal, evolutionary drive. I mean just get down basic, get down core. How about this one for example? Do you wish for happiness and be free of suffering? It's pretty core. You share that with animals. Birds, reptiles, all kinds. That's pretty core. Get down to that level. It's your aspiration to be free of suffering, to find happiness. If you're going to go deeply into meditation, into shamatha, you might get down to the core of the substrate consciousness and say, whoa, there's ground. Report an error

1:34:12 That's pretty basic. That's where I live. That's where I come from. So we see that there's some self-wisdom here, some penetrating insight into our own identity and what is secondary and what's essential. That's going to help a lot. If you get down really to the core, I'm a sentient being who wishes for happiness and the causes of happiness. The platform from loving kindness. And it's that simple. Report an error

1:34:39 We have so many infinite variety of strategies to find happiness and the causes of happiness. But the basic impulse is the same. For the Nazis and the Christian evangelists and for the Buddhist meditators, etc. Basic impulse is the same. We all want the world to be a better place. We all want to be happy. We want to feel safe and secure. We want to enjoy our lives. Report an error

1:35:01 Pol Pot. Report an error

1:35:05 Genocide people, people cut off aid workers' heads and so forth, all at the same time. Their strategy is different. And the intensity with which the mental afflictions are active, that's a lot, that differs a lot. Core aspiration, that we can live in a world of harmony, of peace, of security, of happiness, raise our children and have the freedom to seek the happiness we want. Report an error

1:35:27 But everybody wants that, so that's good. So the equanimity needs to penetrate to Lama. We are looking at the mass murderer. Who's about to be executed is in America. You don't probably execute people who do. We like it in America. We like doing that. It makes us feel safer. Report an error

1:35:53 Even if it's a person who's okay, no hope of ever getting in a prison. You're there for life because what you did was too bad. Too, too, too bad. And you can look at that person and say, yeah, that's me. Report an error

1:36:10 Different conditioning. But the mental fixings that person has, every single one of them, I have. I just didn't come into the circumstances. That accentuated them, reinforced them, empowered them, justified them. I didn't, so I'm not a mess maker. That person did, so that person's a mess maker. But the anger is the same. I've experienced hatred in my life. I know what that means. So forth. So the Christians have a lovely phrase for that. Report an error

1:36:39 They have a lot of good phrases. So grace of God, karma, tomatoes, tomatoes. Circumstances beyond our control. Because who can say you chose your family deliberately? You thought this was going to really work out well. Who can say that? Or that you chose what happened to you over the course of your life. Report an error

1:37:04 Tough. So then when you see it, there's only really one realistic response. When one sees a person that's engaged in terrible, terrible action. Report an error

1:37:16 The same mental afflictions as we do. But they got into situations that let those mental afflictions loose without restraint. Report an error

1:37:26 People suffer. They suffer. Thich Nhat Hanh wrote a beautiful poem. If I were well prepared, I would quote it, but I can't. It was a long time ago. I think it was Idi Amin. Remember him? One that liked people for target practice? People of a different tribe, of course, not his tribe. I think it was his time, a long time ago. Patik Natana, a great poet. Does anybody know it? Report an error

1:37:54 Probably know where I'm going. But basically, he's looking at that, where there's so obviously someone who's the victimizer, and the victim, innocent people just getting shot for time. Report an error

1:38:07 So many tortures. And he opened us this great Vietnamese bodhicitta. He attended to that reality. Such viciousness, such cruelty. And those who are victims of such cruelty. Report an error

1:38:37 So that's where we're going here. You see why this is not an afterthought. This is not an anticlimax. This is the big show. This is what everything else is building up to. This is the grand finale. If you can really realize equanimity, you're set for life. And you're set for death, too. It would certainly work out. Report an error

1:38:57 So that's equanimity. Report an error

1:39:02 Let's come back a little bit before the Report an error

· · ·

1:40:00 meditation we're about to begin. I'd like to put the pieces all together that we've been building up piece by piece. So in the cultivation of love and kindness, I'm sure you remember that during the out-breath, the inspiration of love and kindness, during the in-breath, we then eventually practice the cultivation of compassion. Report an error

1:40:22 I'll put those two together in a Tibetanist called Dong Len. Dong means to send, as for sending out love and kindness. Len means to take in. So this was referred to earlier. A very powerful practice. It goes back at least a thousand years. A bit more, actually. And we're going to put these together in the cultivation of equanimity, which really is the synthesis of the love and kindness and compassion, which is now put into one integrated practice. Report an error

1:40:51 Now, when I taught them earlier, I was suggesting that simply when you're breathing out, you're breathing in. It keeps it simple, it keeps it light. But the full version of the Donglan practice does entail visualization. And many people, including myself, find it very helpful. I do it a lot. I find it meaningful and in an interesting kind of way, also enjoyable. Report an error

1:41:17 But it entails a working hypothesis. And if it's not your working hypothesis, it wouldn't do it. Because there's no reason to pretend to believe something you don't believe. And the working hypothesis is that each of us has a Buddha nature. It's not Buddhist, by the way. It's just that the deepest ground dimension of our awareness is by nature pristinely pure. And the wellspring of all genuine happiness and the wellspring of all virtue, Buddha nature. Report an error

1:41:43 So many people call it, as I think Christians call it, I'm going to take a wild guess, the kingdom of heaven within. I think that's what they call it. Report an error

1:41:51 So forth, I won't get through the list as a comparative scholar, but it does come up a lot. I think it is part of what Aldous Huxley called the perennial philosophy. I think it's a common discovery, that dimension, as well as the substrate consciousness that also goes by different names. But this is deeper. This is much, much deeper. This is ultimate ground. It's very simple in principle. Pristine awareness is primordially pure, luminous, the very wellspring of all virtues, the very wellspring. Report an error

1:42:17 You finally tapped into the ultimate ground of eudaimonia. So that's our basic nature. That's the hypothesis for people who don't know it. That's ultimate reality for people who do know it. So then you simply decide for yourself. Is that a working hypothesis, not an article of faith? An interesting thing about this is that, is faith involved? Sure it is. I mean, if one embraces that, incorporates that into one's worldview, is faith involved? Report an error

1:42:44 Of course it is, unless you already know it, then it's not faith in its knowledge. But it's not faith of another kind. It's not like this. In the Buddhist worldview, it's said that there are six realms of existence. Six realms of existence. Hell beings, pretas or spirits, there's animals, there's humans, there's demigods called asuras, there are devas, godlike beings, and they're all in saṃsāra and they whirl around. Report an error

1:43:11 So you can believe that or not, but if you believe it, you're believing in somebody else's authority, that somebody else knows what's going on, but you don't. So some people believe it, some people don't, but that's your choice. And maybe you earn, maybe you study Buddhism a lot and it earns your trust, your confidence, even though you haven't seen those realms by context and so forth. Report an error

1:43:28 You say, well, I believe in exoplanets, even though I really can't ascertain that one, but I trust the astronomers, they know what they're talking about. And these Buddhist contemplatives, many of them say they've seen these, including the very recent past. And I trust them. So then, okay, it's trust, it's earned trust. Report an error

1:43:44 But it's still trust in somebody else's knowledge about something else that we're not experiencing. When it comes to Buddha in age, it's a bit different. It's a bit different. Because it's not somebody else's realm. It's not something outside of ourselves. In fact, it's just the opposite. There couldn't be anything more inside than the ground level of your own awareness, your own pristine awareness, primordial consciousness. Report an error

1:44:07 So it's really talking about you and not about something outside of you. But you, of course, not on the level of being a woman or a man. Or even being a human being versus a non-human being. It's deeper than that. So years ago when I picked up that book, Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, on Dzogchen when I was 20, you know the story. Report an error

1:44:31 I didn't understand it, and I knew I didn't understand it. But intuitively, there was just such a strong tug that I think I'm going to devote my life to that point. I have to figure that one out. That's going to be the path. But it's not an intellectual, and there's certainly no empirical evidence. They weren't citing, and this yogi demonstrated this in the 15th century. This was recorroborated by a group of yogis at Sera Monaster College. Report an error

1:44:52 There was no evidence at all. They didn't cite anybody's experience. It's Padmasambhava speaking out of his own experience. He's not going to cite somebody else's. And he just said, this is the way it is. This is what I see. But it resonated. It wasn't empirical. It wasn't rational. But it wasn't anti-empirical. It wasn't anti-rational. Report an error

1:45:09 It just cuts right through it. Again, the hot knife through butter. Down to a deep level that all I can say was intuitive. And so, speaking of Buddha nature, it either resonates kind of an intuitive chord or resonance within your being, or it doesn't. If it doesn't, then, you know, rest. Don't worry. But if it does resonate, it just stirs something within that kind of like, I think it's true. Report an error

1:45:35 Then why not? Why not? Take that as a working hypothesis. So let's imagine you do. So for those who want to, If you don't do it, just stick with the breath. You don't have to believe anything except for your breathing. And so the visualization in this practice that actually does empower it a lot, if you can embrace it, it's meaningful to you, is you visualize symbolically your own Buddha nature, pristine awareness, as a radiant orb of light into your heart, right in the center, not the heart organ, but the heart chakra. Report an error

1:46:03 And this symbolically, it's incandescent, it's radiant, it's white, it's pure, pure light, and it's inexhaustible. So no matter how many rays of light flow out, it never diminishes, it's never depleted. And so when you're doing the practice, I'm going to give the prelude and then we'll do the practice, so not much more prelude is necessary. Report an error

1:46:21 But I want to explain why we're doing the visual decision. It's not just a light show. It's actually profoundly symbolic. And so you visualize that as that's your ground, that's your nucleus, that's what you discover when you penetrate right through all the layers to your ultimate ground. And so there is the visualization. And then as we're attending to the different... Report an error

1:46:41 Individual sentient beings who come to mind. Then with the out-breath, we're attending to them closely and sending out the aspirations, the thoughts of love and kindness. And as we do so, we imagine this like a pearl of light, just like a cascade flowing out like a waterfall, like a fountain of light, and reaching out, embracing them, suffusing them, totally encompassing them, pervading them with this benevolence, with a sense of well-being, of love and kindness. Report an error

1:47:14 We offer them fulfillment, but it's their own fulfillment that we're offering from our hearts. And then for the Leng part, the taking part, then that's where the compassion comes in. We're attending to them where they are now with suffering and the cause of suffering. And so we symbolically imagine that suffering is like a shroud of darkness, a veil of dark. Report an error

1:47:33 And as we're breathing in and arousing the aspiration of compassion, then we imagine like a siphon, imagine drawing in like a suction. Drawing in that darkness, drawing, just taking it away, taking it away. Imagine that darkness converging. You have good sci-fi effects, special effects. So imagine doing that. You're drawing it in, all this darkness, like this dark, dark cloud, coming and converging in right into your heart. But not your heart organ and not just your general area. Report an error

1:48:01 It goes right into that nucleus, right into that orb. And it consumes it and extinguies it without trace. It doesn't matter how much is out there. It could be a galaxy load. When that darkness comes in, this is bigger, this is more powerful. This consumes it without trace. This is like dropping a down feather into a bonfire. Report an error

1:48:21 It's gone. There's just nothing left. It's just gone. So all that darkness comes in as you're wishing, may you be free of suffering in its causes, symbolic, you imagine, lifting it from them. Taking upon yourself, dissolving into your heart, and then there's not even a flicker, not even a tiny diminution of light in your heart. It just absorbs it. Report an error

1:48:40 It's gone. And then you breathe out again. So no depletion and recharging. It's just constant. That's a practice of doing that. So now let's do it, okay? As you wish. And if you don't want to do the light show, then just do it with breathing. And Report an error

· · ·

1:53:12 it's set with your mind, and it's not before. And the space of the mind and whatever. Report an error

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1:57:11 And you leave your awareness just wide open with the space of the mind. Report an error

1:57:20 I invite you to let your mind go to free flow without controlling the contents, Report an error

1:57:28 resting at ease in your own awareness, resting in its own ground. See who comes to mind, the appearances of one individual, another, a group of individuals, human, non-human. Report an error

1:57:41 See who comes to mind. Agreeable people, disagreeable people, strangers, loved ones, all kinds, all sentry beings in one session. Report an error

1:57:55 See who comes to mind right now. Report an error

1:58:09 The vigil has come to mind. Now focus not simply on the mental appearance, which occurs only in your mind, but by way of these appearances, attend to the person or persons closely to an actual sentient being. If they knew what you were looking at, they would be looking back out there. Report an error

1:58:39 A person with his or her own joys and sorrows, personal history, aspirations, sufferings and happiness. And just like yourself, at base, wishing for happiness, for security, for fearlessness. Report an error

1:58:56 Wishing to be free of suffering and pain. The same. And just as worthy as yourself for realizing these core aspirations. Report an error

1:59:09 Attend closely. Report an error

1:59:37 And now just as you wish for your own happiness, that you yourself find happiness in its causes, that you are free of suffering in its causes, as you breathe out, as you attend closely to this person, arouse this aspiration. Report an error

1:59:55 From your heart, may you, like myself, find happiness in the causes of happiness. as you breathe out, imagine again this Cascade of white light flowing from your heart and embracing, suffusing, totally engulfing the individual or group. Report an error

2:00:18 And imagine them finding that they seek most inwardly a meaningful apis, eudaimonia, fulfillment. You Report an error

2:00:36 may do so in a few respirations one after another with each out breath. Come back and breathe out the Report an error

2:00:46 aspiration, the yearning. And as you breathe out, imagine them realizing the fulfillment of their own deepest aspirations. Report an error

· · ·

2:01:25 Now in actuality this person is in all likelihood, if it's a sentient being, this person still is experiencing suffering, vulnerable to suffering, subject to mental addictions again and again, perpetuating the cycle of suffering, just like we are. Report an error

2:01:45 So as you breathe in, arouse the aspiration as you would for yourself, may you be free of suffering and its true causes. And as you breathe in, imagine the suffering and the causes of suffering to which this person is subject, symbolically as a shroud of darkness and with each ending Report an error

2:02:09 fading away. Report an error

2:02:13 dissolving extinction in your heart and the person becoming free by breath you breathe in. Report an error

· · ·

2:03:40 appearances of this person fade back into the space of the mind, rest at ease. Report an error

2:03:56 So Report an error

· · ·

2:15:12 that's the practice of Donglen. It includes, of course, the sense of equanimity, the even-heartedness. So, it Report an error

2:15:24 does to do. We turn to the notes again, equanimity. It's not a really great translation, I just don't know a better one. Even-heartedness, even-mindedness. The general translation is equanimity, so I'll stick with it, but it's very important to recognize it's not an emotion. Once again, it's not an emotion. Equanimity, one could say, is kind of a neutral emotion, or actually I've asked people and they don't even regard that as an emotion, because it doesn't emote, it doesn't display itself, it doesn't come out. Report an error

2:15:53 But as long as you know what it means, it's not simply a feeling of indifference or equanimity, it is this even-heartedness such that the flow of one's caring... For others, it's evenly distributed and doesn't have ragged edges or partiality because of the appearances of being pleasurable or pleasant or unpleasant. Report an error

2:16:12 So it's equanimity, the grand finale of the four immeasurables. In the classic sequence of the meditation, as taught by Buddha Gosa, the same text, I keep on coming back to him because he's really kind of a foundation for this whole retreat. In this, he suggests that one starts with a neutral person. Report an error

2:16:30 I would add, probably it would be best actually if it's a neutral person, a person for whom, and what does neutral mean? It means a person for whom you don't have any attachment. It's self-centered, I really need this person, I want this person, like that. Not attachment or aversion. You don't feel really a lot of liking, desire and so forth, nor aversion, just kind of right there in the middle. And it may be a person you know quite well. Report an error

2:16:52 You just don't have any strong feelings about one way or another. That's a neutral person. So you start with such a person, and then you... Engage in the practice we just did, and there are many ways of doing this, but I think it's a very meaningful one that we just did. So you attend to the neutral person, but in a way that's full of warmth, of kindness, benevolence, compassion. Report an error

2:17:12 And then you move to a dear person for whom attachment may arise, but you look through the attachment, you look through the agreeable, pleasant, attractive qualities to a person who is at core really not different than the neutral person, no more or less deserving of loving kindness. compassion, joy, and freedom from sorrow as a neutral person. we practice again there, finally a hostile person, or a negative person, a negative person. Report an error

2:17:39 When one wants to make this really hardcore, a little bit dangerous, then the way of practicing it is to give an edge to it, a real edge, a classic practice, especially in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. And that is you focus on the neutral person. And you do focus, you do what we normally do anyway. Report an error

2:18:01 You attend to those very bland, kind of boring, neither agreeable nor agreeable qualities, just like, why this person is so ordinary. And you really arouse a sense of indifference by focusing on the appearances. It's just not particularly agreeable, hasn't done anything for me, hasn't done anything against me, neither particularly virtuous nor mean spirit, it's just kind of nothing special. Report an error

2:18:25 And you manifest, you draw forth that feeling of the person as an it. A neutral it. Make it manifest. So you see it. It's right there in your face. This is how I treat people. This is how I view people when I'm not meditating. And then you cut through it. You cut through it. You cut through all that bland vanilla veneer to something where you see, oh, now this counts. Report an error

2:18:49 And you see it's like yourself. And you don't regard yourself as vanilla or bland or neutral. We really care. If we're too hot, we're going to get colder and everything else. And so you cut through it until you see the commonality. And that's the crucial point, the commonality. At what level are you and I essentially the same, not different? You focus on that. But you bring forth the indifference, and then you cut through it. Report an error

2:19:11 And now you know it's coming. Then you bring forth the dear person, the person who's agreeable, maybe beautiful, maybe has treated you wonderfully, maybe loves you, admires you, respects you, has done wonderful things for you. Or maybe just the person is so delightful, so charming, attractive, virtuous, that just brings forth. Report an error

2:19:29 This kind of attraction, the attachment, the desire. And one sees this person being so agreeable, very agreeable it, and then you cut through it until it's just like yourself. You see that level, and then you practice Dome then for that person who's looking out, who is not looking at all those appearances that we do. When we look from the outside, we see, oh, you are over there, and we see all the pleasant or unpleasant appearances. Report an error

2:19:55 But from ourselves, you know, we're not looking in a mirror. We're just kind of here, right? We're here, we're not seeing what other people see. And what we're experiencing is our joys and sorrows. That's really in our face. That's really poignant. That's what we're really getting. And whether we're looking good this day or looking bad that day or being agreeable here or disagreeable there, that's all secondary. Report an error

2:20:14 What carries through for every single moment of our waking and even dreaming state is we always want happiness. I'm feeling a tiny itch just above my right ear, right there. Report an error

2:20:26 And I didn't like it. Report an error

2:20:30 That's how much I care about pain. That was really trivial. I mean, I could have just overlooked it. Oh, there's another one coming. That pretty well did it. Yep. This could go on for a long time. I don't want even that much discomfort in the body or the mind. And I'll take even a smidgen. Let's see how the tea is. I think it was pretty good last time. It's not very tasty. Report an error

2:21:02 But it's okay. It's really okay. It's about one little notch above. Absolutely don't care about it at all. Report an error

2:21:11 Who adores chamomile? Come on. But it's a little bit of pleasant. And my throat's a bit more moister and I like that. I'll take a smidgen of happiness, a smidgen of pleasure if it's not too difficult to get. And I'll get rid of even a smidgen of discomfort if it's not too difficult to abandon. And that means I'm just like every other essential being in the universe. So I take that seriously. Report an error

2:21:36 So you bring forth all the attachment and you cut through it to here's a person who scratches the itch just like the Zen master and just like whoever asked that question. What do you do, right? Same. Other people itch, they want to scratch. That pretty well wraps it all up. And then you go to the negative person. Report an error

2:21:57 You really bring it on. It's in a laboratory setting, it's a controlled experiment. You bring it on. The disgust, the resentment, the contempt. The aversion, the hatred, maybe even resentment, maybe even malevolence. You really bring it on. By focusing on all this negative, unappealing, unattractive, all of that, you bring it on. Report an error

2:22:16 Here's a really disgusting it, and you bring it on. In this controlled circumstance, you're not going to hurt anybody. But it's like kind of letting the pus come out. You can see it. I'm capable of viewing people in that way. And then you cut through it. Until you really, you cut deep enough that there's just, at this level, there's no difference between the person you abhor, the person you find boring, and the person you adore. Report an error

2:22:41 Each one like yourself, worthy of happiness and freedom from suffering. So that's kind of a hardcore way of doing it. That should be done under supervision or with care. Report an error

2:22:52 So we go to the analysis. Oh no, this one is first. This is good. This is actually very important. The meditation on impermanence, transience, changeability, immutability. of human relations. Apart from arranged marriages, apart from those which can start out in bland indifference or even aversion, or maybe positive, but you know, never can tell, apart from those when two people come together because they really want to, the weddings are pretty happy events, pretty much. Report an error

2:23:25 The woman's looking as pretty as she can, the man is looking as dapper and appealing as he can, and it all starts off really good. And then half of them are head-on collisions. In the end, I can't stand your guts, don't want to be on the same planet. So something changed, right? Before the romance, it was just one more stranger, just one more man, one more woman. Report an error

2:23:47 Everyone wouldn't even notice him in the crowd, right? One more person, the seven billion of them, so, you know, throw a dart. So it's a complete stranger about whom you don't know anything, have no feelings whatsoever. And then circumstances come together. You fall in love. I need you, I need you, you need me, I love you, you love me, and then we get married. Report an error

2:24:06 And then... I don't love you as much. I don't love you at all. I can't stand your guts. And then it changes. And then they become neutral again. Ten years later, they said, oh, yeah, hi. Report an error

2:24:18 And we're right back where we started. Back to neutrality. And then sometimes it starts all over again. What was it? Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, remember? Yeah, they ran it twice. They like reruns. Even movie stars like reruns, you know, when they're the lead actors. So they did it all over again. Report an error

2:24:40 Amazing. But then that's just the way saṃsāra is. Everything's in a state of flux. Everything changes. You acquire, you lose, you meet, you part, you fall in love, you fall out of love. It's just saṃsāra. Nothing lasts. Nothing is really durable. There are very good marriages that last a whole lifetime. Friendships that have left a whole lifetime. Report an error

2:24:59 We all know that. Generally, it takes some effort. It takes some effort. That spring-like infatuation, that just never lasts. And so, reflecting on that. When we reify a loved one as a loved one, as if intrinsically, intrinsically, this is a relationship forever because that person is going to stay just the same, appealing. Report an error

2:25:22 And then we reify the enemy. This person is intrinsically wall-to-wall disagreeable, and that will never change. Well, it does. Germany and America blasting each other. Japan and America blasting each other off the globe. And then strongest allies. I mean, just the whole history of humanity. His alliances and bitter enemies and alliances and then indifferent. It's everywhere on all levels, individual, international, religions and so forth and so on. Report an error

2:25:51 So when one really reflects on that, then it breaks down the reification that this person is intrinsically neutral, this one intrinsically agreeable, this one intrinsically. It just breaks that down. And one looks at all the vicissitudes, all the changes, all the mutations, pretty much out of control and unpredictable. Report an error

2:26:10 Because who can really say whether one marriage is going to turn out well, whether one friendship is going to last for 50 years or three months and then end this bitter enemy? Because that happens. Who can tell? The answer is, well, we really can't. But then we can ask in the midst of all those unpredictable and uncontrollable vicissitudes, the ups and downs of the changes that we just never saw coming. Report an error

2:26:33 Is there anything that we can count on? Anything that's constant? Anything that carries through day to day, year to year, decade to decade, through all the changes of life? Is there anything that you can say, that will be still there? That will be still there. That we can count on. And the answer is, yeah, there is something. There is something. Report an error

2:26:52 You can really count on it. Money in the bank. And that is, whoever you're attending to, five years from now, ten years from now, or ten lifetimes from now, that person will still wish for happiness and freedom from suffering. And that's a constant. The strategies we come up with to realize happiness, to be free of suffering, oh, it is off the charts, never can tell. Report an error

2:27:13 Craziest things. Sometimes the wisest things, but who can tell? But the core desire, that prime directive of caring. There it is, in one word, it's caring. Every single day. Even in your dreams, you don't want nightmares. You want a good night's sleep. You care all the time. Report an error

2:27:34 And then if we go deep, every sentient being has the capacity, the potential for perfect awakening. It's called Buddha nature. That we can count on. The substrate consciousness with its bliss, luminosity and ananga, that you can count on. That's always there. And on the surface level, always, every single moment, wishing to be free of suffering and its causes, find happiness and its causes. Report an error

2:27:55 It's always there. So one of the greatest gifts one can possibly give to another sentient being is help them find the actual causes of what they're looking for. That'd be very nice. And point out to them the actual causes of what they'd like to be free of. That'd be a very big gift. So we don't wander around in circles and blind and cultivating the causes of misery when we want happiness and cultivating and destroying the causes of happiness when we actually want happiness. Report an error

2:28:23 In fact, it's hard to imagine a greater gift. If you give either that or a million dollars, what should be of greater value? People, teenagers, silly people, piss away money all the time. Report an error

2:28:34 And, you know, die of an overdose. Or they just expend the money and it's all pissed away and then what do they have? It's just kind of like memories of the good life and now they don't have it. So that kind of, that's why they say the gift of Dharma is the greatest gift. And that's the essence of Dharma. Really that's it. It's kind of like blasé, ordinary. Dharma is showing out. Here are the causes of happiness. Here are the causes of suffering. Report an error

2:28:55 Can we help? Identify one. Identify the other. Now do the sensible thing. That's Dharma. All of Dharma pretty much wraps up in that. Being skillful. Report an error

2:29:09 So equanimity is looking through the barriers to the common ground and then doing the sensible thing, wishing for others to find happiness as you wish for, free of suffering as you wish for, because there's really no difference. So this is really profoundly, profoundly reality-based. This is the realistic way to view other sentient beings and to use the nice scientific term objectively, the scientific ideal of objectivity. Report an error

2:29:32 Well, that's exactly this. That one's looking through all the subjective biases of attending to people, and what can you do for me? Oh, I like you a lot. Oh, you did that to me. I don't like you. You're not doing much. Well, I don't care about you. That's all subjective bias. So going here, you're really developing an objectivity, a clarity of vision, cutting through the superficial veneer to what really counts, and as every sentient being wants to be happy, be free of suffering. Report an error

2:29:58 That's the core of this. It's extremely profound. So the meditation on transience and changeability, that's an insight, it's wisdom, it's knowing, it's a tremendous boon, a turbocharger, to really make this practice work. Because the general tendency here is to grasp onto that which is by nature transient, subject change, fluctuating, and latch onto it as if it's stable, enduring, and unchanging. Report an error

2:30:25 Core delusion. Core delusion. Just as it's a core delusion to look at another person, for example. Like in a romantic falling in love and feeling you're the very source of my happiness. You are the one. You're the one I've all been waiting for. You are the alpha and the omega. You just make me so happy. Report an error

2:30:52 I want to be with you forever because you make me happy. That's mistaking that which is not a source of your happiness but a source of your happiness. Report an error

2:31:01 Because that person was not designed by God or karma or anything else to be your happy machine. Nobody is. Nobody can do it. Report an error

2:31:11 And so that's a delusion. And whether it's a car, whether it's status, whether it's your body, looking at things that are not sources of happiness as being sources of happiness, genuine sources, the artesian well business, looking at them as being something they're not, just rise to an awful lot of suffering. Report an error

2:31:29 Basic core. And then the question came up earlier in this retreat, Are there true sources of happiness? And we came up with some really good options, possibilities. Remember? Love, deep meditation, substrate consciousness, Buddha nature, there's quite a few. Insight, knowing reality as it is, that can really help. But it's identifying what are actually the sources of happiness and are actually the sources of suffering and not merely the catalyst or cooperative conditions that may or may not deliver the goods or catalyze the goods. Report an error

2:32:00 So. And that's why this practice has to be imbued with wisdom. So there's looking at the impermanent as being permanent. That's going to block this. Looking at that which is not a source of happiness, of your own happiness as being the source of happiness. No, it's not a source of your happiness. That's a person. Why don't you shake hands and get to know the person is a person and not mistake that person as the source of your happiness? Because it's not. Report an error

2:32:22 No matter how nice they are to you, they're not the source of your happiness. Your own mind is the source of your happiness. Nobody else. And your own mind is the source of your misery. And so it's just kind of getting things straight. And it's kind of common sense, but we often forget it. And then the third one, looking at that which is not I and mine as being I and mine. Report an error

2:32:39 That'll really block this. That'll really do it. Or we're looking at another person as if there's something in the very nature of that person that makes them mine. My anything. My friend, my wife, my, my, my, anything. Actually, no, that's something you superimpose on the person. What you're dealing with there is essentially being. Report an error

2:33:00 And not a my anything. So, sure, do we have, yeah, I have a spouse, stepdaughter, grandchild, I have friends, I have parents and so forth. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. In a manner of speaking, I mean, it has a certain reality to it. But if we went to my dad and look into him and try to find the my part, the Alan Wallace part of my father, you're not going to find it. He's a man. He's complete in himself. He's a human being. Report an error

2:33:22 And there's no part of him, not even a hair that actually belongs to me. Even though he's my father. I love him as my father. But there's no part of him that's mine. Report an error

2:33:31 And we share genetics, but then that's really kind of pretty thin. If you looked at me and said, yeah, but it's not my, these are similar to his genes, but not identical, because they're in my body, not in his body. So even that, not really his genes. So there it is. Those are the three fundamental ways that we commonly mistake reality. The impermanent for being permanent, that which is not a source of happiness as being such, that which is not by nature I or mine, as being I or mine. Report an error

2:33:54 And that's going to block this, that's going to throw this equanimity off every single time. Because it's delusion. And this equanimity is rooted in reality. So reality and delusion don't get along. One has to give. One has to give away. So that's that. And then we go to the analysis. As our time is running out. It's pretty straightforward, though. The E, we can go right on through. Report an error

2:34:18 We're going right down to E. The other ones, I think, are clear. The idea, we've been through that. So the near enemy is aloof indifference. Cold indifference. Stupid indifference. So called by all of those. And I think we know what it means, and it sometimes happens as a result of lopsided meditation practice, where one has this even sense towards everybody, and it's, I don't really give a damn about anybody, but equally. Report an error

2:34:42 Not for my family, not for my friends, don't really care that much about them one way or another. Not for men or women, children or old people, don't hate any of them, don't really care about any of them. Every man for yourself, but you know, really, you don't do anything for me. Cold, really stone cold. Report an error

2:35:01 And it is even, but it's dead even, massive blockage to one spiritual part. So that's that, pretty straightforward. It's where it goes awry, it loses all the heart. Instead of equally distributing the heart, the heart freezes. So that's that. Then attachment to those who are near, aversion to those who are far, who are on the other side, attachment for on my side of the fence, aversion for those who are on the other side of the fence. Report an error

2:35:30 That was the far enemies, that which is diametrically opposed to equanimity. So the phrase here that is used is, may all sentient beings be free of attachment to those who are near, may all sentient beings abide in equanimity, free of attachment to those who are near, that is on my side, and aversion to those who are far, the other side, may we be free of that. Report an error

2:35:53 Because that's the root of all conflict that takes place in the world. Attach it to my side, aversion to the other side. This is everywhere. This is core. The next point is extremely interesting and we don't have much time to discuss it, but the proximate cause, the trigger that really arouses the sense of even-heartedness of seeing the responsibility for one's own deeds. Report an error

2:36:13 This is really embedded in Buddha's worldview. So you accept it or you don't, but it's karma. It's really karma. So a lot can be said there. I'll just leave it at that. That we are participants. We are fully participants in reality. So what's coming our way is entangled with what we've brought out. It doesn't mean that we always deserve what's coming. Like that woman that cheated my wife and me, we didn't deserve it. Not in this lifetime. But the Buddhist worldview, Buddhist worldview, oh sure, sure. Report an error

2:36:41 There was karma there, primarily my money, so I primarily did it because I got it. There was karma there. That was just a ripening of karma. So Tibetans deal with this. When they got invaded, genocide, slaughtered, massacred, tortured and so forth. Most Tibetans really believe this. It's really like we believe in gravity, the laws of Newton. Report an error

2:37:01 Most Tibetans really do believe in karma. They don't just believe it, but actually it's the way they view reality. It's pretty core. They get it from the time they're with mother's milk. They get karma. They get omanipeme on karma very early on. So it's part of their worldview. And so as much as there were certainly many Tibetans that felt anger and hostility and hatred, there's no question about that. Report an error

2:37:21 They're not saints. But still there is that. And I've lived with Tibetans very shortly after their exodus. 1971 was only 12 years after they came out. And some of them came out more recently. And pretty much all of them in Little Macau Gams, this Tibetan community, they all were Buddhists, they all deeply believed in and viewed reality through the lens of believing karma, actions and consequences. Report an error

2:37:42 And in that community, I saw very little, not none, but I saw very little resentment that was ongoing. Resentment for the total loss of their country and the genocide, when in fact they didn't deserve it. This was not a feud that went on, you know, the Chinese beating up Tibetan. Tibetan beating up Chinese. It just wasn't there. They had not had conflict for about 1,200 years. That's a pretty good peaceful time. So the Tibetans had not done anything in recorded history that deserved that. Report an error

2:38:09 It was just, like, pretty evil. Tibetans know that. And there are Tibetans who are very resentful, angry, hateful. But actually, most of them not. And none of the Lamas. None of them are. And they are the leaders. They are the ones that inspire the whole culture. Not their rock stars or movie actors, not their poets or anything else. Report an error

2:38:31 The people who inspire and guide this culture are their lamas. That's it. Not their businessmen either. They're lamas. And all over lamas. They vary a lot, but they all have one message. No hatred. No retaliation. That's not our way. Had a big impact. I could spend the whole evening on that. I was living in that culture. I was blown away. Blown away. Living in an ordinary village. Not just all monks, but ordinary village. Report an error

2:39:00 I've never been surrounded by such warm-hearted, kind, Happy people in my life. And they're refugees that just lost their homeland. They've pretty much all been traumatized one way or another. Hardly any of them just walked out like a picnic. I was blown away because I've had a really nice youth. Rather affluent, not filthy, but very comfortable. Very interesting. Scotland, Switzerland, Israel, America. Report an error

2:39:23 Good education, loving family. I've really had a really good life. I've never met such happy people in my life or warm-hearted. That made a deep impression. Not only the yogis and the great lamas. They said, well, living in this village. Whatever they've got, I want some of that. And it can't be out of reach because it was really common. Report an error

2:39:43 And they're not saying anything. They have attachment, craving, hostility. But the way they manage that adversity is absolutely astonishing. And it had to do with their belief in karma. Their refuge in the Buddhadana Saṅgha, their reverence for their lamas. That pretty well wraps it up right there. They weathered that storm unbelievably well. Report an error

2:40:02 This really means something here. So that's the proximate cause for equanimity. It fails when it produces aloof indifference and it succeeds to answer Himatri's question. It succeeds when attachment and aversion subside. That'll do it. There will be more tomorrow morning, but that'll do it for now. Enjoy your lovely afternoon, and we'll have one more session, of course, for question and answer after the meditation. So see you soon. Report an error

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

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