← B. Alan Wallace

Four Applications Of Mindfulness Retreat 2013 with B. Alan Wallace (part 5)

B. Alan Wallace · 2013 · 59 min · Vajrayana Institute via Internet Archive

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  • 20:26

    Okay? So, scientists will often ask, what's happening there when nobody's looking? Colors don't happen, colors don't arise if nobody's looking. Sounds are not there unless somebody's hearing. You just have ripples in the atmosphere. You have photons coming in, but no colors. You have molecules suspended in the air, but no smells. You have molecules in your food, but they have no taste. You have density of matter in your knees, but no tactile sensation of warmth, and so forth and so on.

  • 22:49

    Is all, one can say, fundamentally emerging, as is passed on, is explored in response to a fundamental question. And that is, how can we suffer less? As the Buddha said, my teachings focus on two themes, the reality of suffering and freedom from suffering. Well, if that's what we're really concerned about, and we are, and all sentient beings are, by definition, if you don't care about suffering, you're not a sentient being.

  • 32:03

    It didn't start out with those theological premises of an absolute world out there, but rather the world always rising relative to the subject. An observer participates the universe, which is now a hot item in quantum mechanics and quantum cosmology. That's core to Buddhism from the beginning, right? No incentive to push hedonic pleasure to the hilt. Oh, my computer's too slow. Oh, computer, where's my prayer wheel? It's going just fine, thank you.

  • 35:46

    with scientific inquiry ethics is like having a well-equipped and clean laboratory like from neuroscience, something like that so all the instruments are there you're keeping it clean all the instruments are in good working order you're maintaining them well The technology you have and the utilization of that technology, that would be like shamatha, samādhi. That's the technology.

  • 38:59

    So it's not a refutation at all of yoga. I think there should be much more in Buddhism. But it is also true that there have been many, many great adepts who have achieved shamatha, and out of that they develop both physical and mental pliancy, buoyancy, malleability, and then on to the vipassanā. So in an ideal world, kind of classically speaking, you would lay a solid foundation of ethics, strong motivation, then practice and achieve shamatha, and now launch full scale into the practice of vipassanā. The cultivation of liberation, and you realize nirvāṇa, realize bodhicitta, realize emptiness and become enlightened in one lifetime. For most of us in the meantime, many of us are not in a position to go off for years on end in solitary retreat as full-time professional contemplative.

0:02 So, we have an hour to go. I'll speak for maybe about half an hour, then we'll see what comes up in terms of discussion, question and answer. Report an error

0:13 I want to highlight again a point of complementarity, this time going more into the Buddhist view, but also putting it in juxtaposition to the most successful avenue for understanding the natural world that humanity has come up with thus far, and that is just over the last 400 years, the rise of modern science. Report an error

0:31 And just to show how complementary the two are, I don't feel one can simply say one is better than the other, but they certainly don't do the same things and don't have the same strengths. And so, brief overview of just how this extraordinary phenomenon of modern science arose, it's quite clear it was deeply influenced. Report an error

0:51 It kind of has a mother and a father, the modern science, this 400-year-old adolescent. And let's say its father would be a little bit arbitrary here, let's say the Judeo-Christian tradition. It's enormously important for the particular type of questions being posed and how they were pursued, because all of the pioneers of the scientific revolution were very devout Christians, every single one of them. Report an error

1:13 There were no Jews. It was too dangerous for them to get into that. So they're all Christian, and that was true for a good, what, maybe 200 years or so, until the 19th century. Almost all of them were Christian. Report an error

1:26 And their worldview, I mean they were taking the Bible quite literally, people like Newton, Galileo, Descartes, Kepler and so forth, some of them Roman Catholic, some of them Protestant, but all of them devout Christians. And therefore believing that there was a God out there who created this whole universe, who created it, governs it, rules it, imposed moral laws upon it. Report an error

1:48 And so they did believe, I think without exception. That there was a God's eye view, there really literally is a God's eye view on the universe, what the universe looks like from God's own perspective. And a real good case in point here is Galileo, who was trained as a youth, as a contemplative in a monastery. Report an error

2:08 And he really took to it, he really wanted to stay there and become a contemplative for the rest of his life. But his dad wouldn't pay for it. Somebody had to pay for it and his dad wouldn't, nobody else would. So his dad told him, okay, get an education, get a job. And so... And so he went off to the university. His dad wanted to become a doctor and didn't like it. And so he became a mathematician and the rest is history. Report an error

2:30 But Galileo's motivation there, that contemplative motivation, I think really did linger through the rest of his scientific career as he made quite explicit that what he was seeking was a God's eye view on the universe or to phrase it another way, to understand the mind of the creator by way of the creation. Report an error

2:53 So if you had a great big clock and you'd like to know the mind, what did the clockmaker have in mind, what was going on in his mind, then you'd learn everything you could about the clock and then draw inferences about the mind of the man who made it. Well, that was the big metaphor. We have computers, they had clocks. That was the cutting-edge technology in the 17th century. And so that was it. Report an error

3:18 He wanted to understand the mind of God. And since he wasn't allowed... Didn't have the opportunity to go follow the time-tested route of Christian contemplatives, and that is looking within. Looking within to your own soul and beyond your soul to the mind of God. That's a classic Augustinian approach of introspection and then transcending your own individuation to having a face-to-face encounter with God. Report an error

3:42 And that was considered the highest form of knowledge, and it was very strongly promoted in the Neoplatonic tradition of Christianity, the contemplative tradition. Galileo, that door was closed. Dad wouldn't pay for it. And so he took, I believe, I think it's quite clear that he took that same aspiration to know the mind of God. Report an error

4:00 But instead of looking within, he looked without. He looked outside. And he was trying to transcend the limitations, the biases of being human. And that is to know reality from God's perspective means not by way of human eyes, human ears, and also not by way of human intellect and human language. And so how would we do that? Well then not by direct perception, because as soon as we perceive when we're using our human faculties, we can't help it. Report an error

4:32 And so we are, as human beings, they knew this back in the 17th century, that the visual imagery that arises isn't out there, it arises independence upon. our particular mechanisms here. Nowadays we call it the visual cortex, the eye, and so forth. But a bumblebee, a rattlesnake, and a bat would all be perceiving, visually perceiving this world in different ways. Report an error

4:53 They're going to have a different perspective. And then likewise, the language you speak, the language you think in, that's going to color, bias, edit how you conceive of the world. And so, Galileo then, his view was to... Devised methods of technology, which he was the first complete scientist. He devised his own technology, he ran his own experiments, made observations, and he was a mathematician. Report an error

5:16 And so he was the whole package. Copernicus wasn't. He didn't run any experiments, had no technology, made no special observations. He was a great mathematician. Galileo, the first paradigm of a modern scientist, but driven by a very deep theological imperative to know the mind of God. And so he had his technology to... Report an error

5:37 To more precisely observe celestial phenomena, the planets, the sun, the moon and so forth. And then of course he was a great terrestrial physicist as well, checking things like gravity and so on. Report an error

5:51 But then how do you think the thoughts of God? When he spoke Italian, he had to read Latin, but those are both human languages, everybody knows that. And then the light went on above his little head and he thought, ha, I got it. What is the language that is universal that anybody in any culture, any time or any space can learn that is a type of logic and a type of language and it's mathematics? Report an error

6:18 And so he thought, aha, mathematics. When he saw these mathematical regularities in nature and Newton then taking that, you know, a whole another dimension beyond, he thought, aha, God is a great mathematician. He created this universe. In accordance with mathematical laws that he soon proposed, in addition to moral laws which he soon superimposed, and therefore insofar as the natural philosopher, which we call a scientist, is thinking in the language of mathematics, that natural philosopher can emulate the thoughts of God and infer what would God be seeing. Report an error

6:56 And so, what they were really after then is what does the universe look like independent of our experience? From God's experience, from God's perspective. And so they really, it was really a very profoundly theological, one could even say a mystical quest, of transcendence, jumping out of your own skin, jumping out of your own mind, viewing reality from God's perspective, which transcends, exists prior to and independent of human experience and human concepts. Report an error

7:25 Because God, you know, God didn't create humans until the sixth day. He was around for the first five, and then who knows what before then. And so the view here, universally accepted by all of the scientists at that time, was that the whole universe was already a done deal. It was already created, it was complete. Human beings came in on the sixth day and then God rested. And so it's out there absolutely and how it is absolutely is how God sees it. Report an error

7:50 Everybody else has a perspective, a bias, a prejudice, limitations. But God doesn't because God is omniscient. And God's view is the absolutely correct one. So from that time onward, for the last 400 years, many scientists to this day, whether or not they believe in God, believe that the agenda, the mission of science is to create theories, pictures, images of you, of reality that more and more closely approximates and more and more completely approximates what God sees. Report an error

8:22 So a view of the natural world, filled in with all of the subcategories of natural science, which at least asymptotically is approaching the one correct view of the one correct reality, one true reality. And if you're a theist, well, we're approximating God's own view of what he created. So one can see this is a very profoundly religious quest. Report an error

8:45 And so enough said on that. Now we come back to Buddhism. In order to do that, you want to develop your technology and make it better, better, better. So that's been a symbiotic relationship for the last 400 years. And Galileo's mathematics was pretty sophisticated, but not as sophisticated as that of Newton. Report an error

9:01 His wasn't as sophisticated as that of, let's say, James Clerk Maxwell. His wasn't as sophisticated as Riemann, whose geometry then allowed Einstein to develop his general relativity theory. And it continues on. So mathematics has become more and more sophisticated technology, obviously. This symbiosis of evolution of mathematics, technology and science. They're all feeding each other and voila, we have this fantastic success and an unparalleled growth of consensual knowledge. Report an error

9:31 Philosophy has not come up with that in those 400 years. Philosophers, very bright, very clever, coming up with a lot of ingenious theories, but they don't agree on anything more now than they did 400 years ago. So we cannot say that's a great success story in terms of developing consensual knowledge. Report an error

9:47 They haven't. They failed. If that's what they're trying to do, they failed. The only branch of philosophy that succeeded was natural philosophy, which they called back in the 17th century experimental philosophy or mechanical philosophy, because the mechanical view of the universe went on hand in hand with that. Report an error

10:04 And likewise, theologians, they're no closer to consensus now than they ever were. So theology, that's another avenue of knowledge, at least for the theologians. But if we look at the Roman Catholics and the Protestants, I don't think they're any closer together now than they were 400 years ago, let alone Jewish theologians and Muslim theologians and Buddhist theoreticians and Hindu and Taoists and so forth. Report an error

10:27 If you're looking for consensus at that theological level, it's going to be a tough one. And so these are three major avenues that human beings have used over the last 400 years and longer for theology and philosophy. Report an error

10:42 But philosophers haven't agreed ever since the time of Plato and Aristotle. They fundamentally disagreed on very crucial points. And so that's been true of the whole history of Western philosophy. Theologians haven't agreed. And natural philosophers began to agree. And now we have textbooks upon textbooks of consensual knowledge in all of the major branches of science. Report an error

11:03 It shows something took place here, a lot of consensual knowledge, and it also has the great dividend of giving rise to this massive technology. Which has been in many ways extremely helpful. So if we look at all of that and say, okay, what have you Buddhists been doing over there in Asia? What have you been doing? In fact, let's just take a really almost 100 % Buddhist country where they had almost no interaction with the Western civilization at all. Report an error

11:29 It was almost like they were on the moon. India got clobbered by Great Britain. China got clobbered by everybody. A lot of Southeast Asia got clobbered by the French and the Americans and the British and so forth. Tibet was just so remote and so well protected by these immense mountain ranges that they had almost no contact with the West right into the 20th century. Report an error

11:53 Quite remarkable, quite unique. And they're not some primitive savages, very, very primitive culture. No, they had an elaborate language and vast literature, tremendous philosophies, beautiful art, music, nice music. Report an error

12:07 But their spirituality was just unbelievable. And then there was no country on the planet. It doesn't exist now. And there, before the Chinese Communist invasion, there was no society on the planet that was even in the same ballpark, in the same, how do you say, could be a close competitor. For example, they had a population of 6 million people and 6,000 monasteries. So one monastery for every 1,000 people? Report an error

12:37 Show me a country that had that. And then the number of monks, like one out of five or six men were monks, one out of seven women were nuns. And then there were many, many yogis and scholars who were not monastic. Well, you didn't find that anywhere. So if we're looking for something that's kind of diametrically opposed to the surge of modernity, which is becoming more and more secular, it seems like the minute, but certainly over the last century, a couple of centuries, since the time of Darwin. Report an error

13:02 Then while the great surge of society, Eurocentric society, is moving in one direction, more and more outward, more and more materialistic, frankly, there's Tibet, isolated, untouched, the hidden, the forbidden kingdom. And it was only when they got hammered to the point of genocide by people espousing the worldview of scientific materialism. Report an error

13:27 One shouldn't overlook that fact. That they weren't simply promoting an economic system, which is quite compatible with Buddhism. Socialism, as we find in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, there's nothing there incompatible with Buddhism at all. And if it's a bit more intense, well, if it's socialism, that is, everybody give what you can and receive what you need, but serve everybody collectively, if that's the general principle of socialism, the Dalai Lama said, you know, I'm a socialist. Report an error

13:52 You know, it's very compatible with bodhicitta, altruism and so forth. So if that's all the Chinese communists were bringing in, Tibetans would have said, good, okay, welcome, let's be friends. But no, they came in and they destroyed almost every single monastery in the country and killed hundreds of thousands of monks and nuns, burned the books. Report an error

14:09 So there was a real agenda here. It was not just economic, it was ideological. Their worldview was profoundly incompatible with Buddhism. They had bigger guns. They destroyed Buddhism. And so that's just a bit of very tragic history. And it wasn't only in Tibet, it was throughout, under the domination of Stalin, Mao Zedong. Report an error

14:25 Pol Pot and so forth, Buddhism as well as other religions have been absolutely devastated by the domination by scientific materialism, couched in the context of communism. So it's the notion that only religions engage in religious warfare. That myth should now be completely buried because the scientific materialists have waged religious warfare like nobody else. Report an error

14:48 They've killed many more people. So that's just a bit of sad history. But let's focus on Tibet here. And again, a lot has come back, even under this extremely repressive regime. But what took place there, if we just look at that brief overview, it's different in every way. And that is, Buddhism has no notion, it never had a notion of there being some god out there who created the whole universe, superposed his rules upon it, punishes and rewards. Report an error

15:16 If that's theism, Buddhism is not theistic. Now, theism has many, many guises. But I just say, if that's your God, then Buddhism has no God. It doesn't accept that notion of God. That's a big, complicated, can lead to a very elaborate discussion, and I'm not going to go there. But just keeping to the point, as we're about to go into, tomorrow we'll go into the main practice of Vipassanā. Today we're focusing on Samatha. So one day for Samatha. Report an error

15:43 That whole notion just is nowhere found in all of Buddhism. And moreover, in Buddhism, there's just, like in a classic Buddhist culture like Tibet, if you look at the level of technology they had, before Hanyukhara and his friend came there and started introducing electricity, I mean, they had almost nothing. Report an error

16:04 And they had almost no progress for hundreds and hundreds of years. They had water wheels and they had prayer wheels. They had virtually no wheeled vehicles. Because if you don't have a road that's good enough to support a bicycle, then why build a road? But then they say, why do we want a road? We've got yaks. So they had no incentive to build roads that could support wheeled vehicles like bicycles and tricycles, let alone cars. Report an error

16:29 And so the best technology they had, I think, was really the water wheel for grinding their barley and their prayer wheel for sending out prayers in all directions. So that was it. If you look there, you can really have a hard time finding anything else in terms of technology. And no interest in developing technology. No interest in developing a better lubricated prayer wheel so you can make prayers faster. They weren't looking for the update 101. Report an error

16:55 Tibet Apple is coming out with a new and improved. Now we have them. Now you can get them on your dashboard. They're solar powered and they all go by themselves. Report an error

17:06 But there it is. It's just no interest. There was really no interest in external progress. They lived in equilibrium with their environment. They did not overgraze. They had very little hunting. They had no population growth. You have that many monks and nuns, that cuts down your population, but the population wasn't decreasing. Report an error

17:23 So it was stable. It was environmentally friendly. Virtually no progress of any kind outwardly, because they were quite content with what they had. Nobody was fabulously wealthy. There was no abject poverty. Nobody died of starvation in Tibet until the Chinese came in. Report an error

17:40 And all the emphasis. I'm not really being exaggerating here. I mean, of course, people who want to make money try to make money. They're not a bunch of saints. But overall, the ideal for the culture was that all the progress we really care about is inner progress. And so if you had a really bright son or daughter, you'd probably send them off to a monastery or a convent so they could get the best education and really make something of themselves. And that's become a really good scholar, contemplative, etc., etc. Report an error

18:06 And so... But were they interested, that is, this classically Mahāyāna Buddhist country, civilization, were they interested in the pursuit of knowledge? Absolutely yes. I mean, in Buddhism as a whole, if the root of suffering goes back to ignorance, then the antidote is knowledge. It's not faith, belief or obedience, it's knowledge. Report an error

18:28 And only knowledge, knowing reality as it is, will set you free. And it has to be something more than inferential knowledge. It has to be direct knowledge, perceptual knowledge. It has to finally be non-conceptual knowledge, because that is the deepest form in the Buddhist view. So we see some fundamental differences here, with the views of Aristotle, for example, who considered reason to be the highest faculty, and Galileo considering mathematical inference to be the highest form of knowledge, which doesn't really transform the knower in any deep existential or spiritual fashion. Report an error

19:00 You simply have more knowledge. And so we know nowadays that many, many brilliant scientists with tremendous knowledge, people like Richard Feynman and many others. But as human beings, they're kind of just, well, you're a very clever human being. But if you're looking, well, how's your compassion? How's your ethics? Are you generous? You have tremendous patience. That's not part of the training, you know. Report an error

19:22 So it's something different. But coming right back, you're not straying too far. So we have this central thrust in all of Buddhism. The liberation, awakening is achieved by way of knowing, knowing reality as it is, and the fact that we are unknowing, and not only unknowing, but the fact that we're delusional, we're misapprehending reality. Report an error

19:41 That's giving rise to all mental afflictions, which give rise to all suffering and the perpetuation of saṃsāra. So when the Buddhists, from the very beginning, from the time of the Buddha himself, when Buddhists set out to understand reality as it is, in order to... Replace ignorance with knowledge and delusion with clarity of understanding, then the reality we're seeking to understand, and this next point is extremely important, the reality we're seeking to understand, in Sanskrit it's called Loka, L-O-K-A, or in Tibetan Jikten. Report an error

20:12 Loka means the experienced world, the world of experience, the world that we experience, not some world existing independently of human experience as it is presumably known by somebody else, like God. Okay? So, scientists will often ask, what's happening there when nobody's looking? Colors don't happen, colors don't arise if nobody's looking. Report an error

20:35 Sounds are not there unless somebody's hearing. You just have ripples in the atmosphere. You have photons coming in, but no colors. You have molecules suspended in the air, but no smells. You have molecules in your food, but they have no taste. You have density of matter in your knees, but no tactile sensation of warmth, and so forth and so on. Report an error

20:54 So, okay, never mind all those subjective impressions, they're called secondary attributes that rise relative to our sense modalities. What's really out there when none of us are looking, in other words, what's really out there that only God sees, that's a central question in most of the natural sciences, like in physics. Report an error

21:13 When they discovered the Higgs boson, the assumption is that was already there, we discovered it, but it was there whether or not we could measure it. We finally got around, got good enough technology to measure something that was already there, but it was there when nobody was looking. And that's what physics on the whole, now quantum mechanics, it's very interesting very quickly, but certainly all of classical physics through the 19th century was all aimed at unveiling, disclosing what's already absolutely out there, independent of our experience, which means independent of our measurements. Report an error

21:43 Now quantum mechanics really threw a spanner into that works. And raises issues that still have not been resolved. But overall, quantum mechanics is still an isolated discipline with very little impact on biology and many other disciplines. It seems so rarefied and so kind of cloistered that we don't need to worry about it. I think it's a fundamentally false assumption, but it's one held by many, many people. Report an error

22:07 But coming back to experience world, the phenomenology from Husserl and Heidegger, they use a term that's exactly suitable for Buddhism. We call it Lebenswelt, the lived world. The world of lived experience. And that was something of a reaction to this whole notion of what's absolutely out there independent of our experience. Report an error

22:27 So it's a philosophical movement primarily popular on the continent, the European continent, much less so in the United States or elsewhere, let alone places like China or India. It has very little impact. But coming right again back to Buddhism, the whole point is not to understand some reality existing independently of our experience because Buddhist philosophy, the whole worldview, the whole of Buddhadharma, Is all, one can say, fundamentally emerging, as is passed on, is explored in response to a fundamental question. Report an error

22:59 And that is, how can we suffer less? As the Buddha said, my teachings focus on two themes, the reality of suffering and freedom from suffering. Well, if that's what we're really concerned about, and we are, and all sentient beings are, by definition, if you don't care about suffering, you're not a sentient being. Report an error

23:20 Sentient beings experience suffering. If they don't, they're not a sentient being. Not only suffering, of course, but also joy, pleasure, happiness, indifference. And so this is the fundamental impetus, the fundamental drive behind all of the Buddhist teachings, is to help us free ourselves from that which we already don't want, but instead of simply anesthetizing it, avoiding it, recovering it over, really fathoming the reality of suffering, rather than simply trying to understand it. Report an error

23:48 We become scientists of suffering. And then as we become scientists of suffering, really seeking to understand the reality, the first noble truth of suffering, then as we go deeper and deeper and deeper, then we start asking these really penetrating questions that might get us somewhere. And that is, what are the causes of suffering? Why are we vulnerable to suffering? Why do we suffer so much? Why do we often not learn from our experience? Why do we often get older without becoming wiser? Report an error

24:13 Get older without finding greater happiness? Perhaps even greater depression. Why is this? We're so intelligent. Why aren't we more effective in overcoming our own and other suffering? How is it if we make this very contemporary? And I find this really biting. I find it very disturbing. The 20th century has been commonly pointed to as a century in terms of the growth of science and technology, a century in which humanity learned more about the natural world in the 20th century than in all the centuries preceding. Report an error

24:46 And I think it's probably a defensible statement. The growth of science was just phenomenal. We think about 1900 people getting to work, going to their physics labs in horse and buggy, Max Planck, Einstein, the pioneers. If they're getting to work in 1902, 1905, Einstein came out with special relativity theory when he got to his work in horse and buggy. It's kind of weird, isn't it? Report an error

25:13 And so horse and buggy at the beginning, we all know how that century turned out, what we had at the end of the century. That growth of technology just staggers the mind, but it corresponds to the growth of knowledge. So one thinks, man, that must have been a terrific century. That kind of growth of knowledge, unprecedented. Report an error

25:29 We must have gotten, humanity as a whole, must have gotten so much happier in that century. And that must have been just one fantastic century. But by the way, that was a century in which the assault on the natural environment, the degradation of our environment, that was worse for the planet in the 20th century than all the centuries preceding. Report an error

25:48 What humanity did to our planet in terms of wiping out other species, violating, polluting, decimating the natural environment. Oh, the 20th century was a catastrophe. But I thought that was a world we know much more. So we know about, and then we're going to destroy it like never before. This is really a weirdness. And now we know more about the human body, more about society and so forth. Report an error

26:10 But in terms of man's inhumanity against man, and it usually was men, well... Where's the parallel? First World War? How many tens of millions of people died in that? They're all Christian. Pretty much, they're all Christian. How many tens of millions did they just mow down like wheat? Report an error

26:29 What got into them? What was wrong? Didn't you see that maybe this isn't a good idea? It took them four years to stop? After tens of millions died, so many civilians? And then the Second World War, we all know the story, you don't need me to tell you about it, but it wasn't only Hitler, it was Stalin, it was Mao Zedong, 40 to 60 million people killed by Mao Zedong. Report an error

26:49 Man's inhumanity against man was just, oh, I think more in the 20th century than all the preceding ones. And the preceding ones were not that great. But that magnitude of methodical decimation of whole groups of tens of millions of people, What was wrong with it? We know so much and yet we're treating each other more savagely than ever before in history. We know more about the natural environment and now we're violating it more intensely than ever before. Report an error

27:13 We know more about other life forms on the planet but we've wiped out more than ever before in all of recorded history, more in the 20th century. There's something really wrong here. Something of fantastic imbalance. And I think it's quite simple. We know so much about the external world and so little about the intern. What's the origins of suffering? Report an error

27:33 How does one become more compassionate? How do we become more ethical? And so forth. What did we learn in the 20th century? Not enough. I think that's the answer. And so there's a complementarity here that is quite majestic, quite beautiful. Because all of those strengths I just mentioned for Western science and technology, Buddhism just doesn't have. Report an error

27:53 I mean, Tibet's kind of the paradigm of that. But you don't find it in Thailand, you don't find it in Burma, Sri Lanka, you don't find it... In Mongolia and so forth, they also didn't have technology. They got the technology from the West. And in terms of natural sciences and so forth, they didn't have it. And they had no incentive to develop it because they were just staying on the core, these Buddhist cultures. Report an error

28:13 The core knowledge, the most important knowledge, was about the nature of the mind, the role of mind in nature, the origins of suffering, the path to liberation, how to cultivate virtue and find genuine happiness. And these are exactly the areas in which the 20th century made virtually no progress at all. Report an error

28:28 So, we see, no progress, no progress. There's a real symmetry there. No progress in Tibet for 1,200 years in areas for the last 400 Western civilization is just amazing. But the 20th century, no progress, where the Tibetans had made tremendous progress. How many bodhisattvas and great adepts and great scholars, great philosophers, enlightened beings over 1,200 years of Tibetan Buddhism. Report an error

28:51 It staggers the imagination. Woe, do they progress. And they were so important there. Those are the people they revered, worshipped as the very paradigms. This is what human beings can become. And happily we still have some of those people who have gained international reputations. The Dalai Lama, I mean, it's quite extraordinary that here's a man with no wealth to speak of, no political power to speak of. Report an error

29:15 He's not incredibly handsome. Nice, but nobody writes, oh man, how hot he is. It's not what comes to mind. And there he comes, you know, this little tiny nation with no political clout at all, comes out as a refugee, so he's only really actually leading about 200,000, 300,000 people. Report an error

29:36 And he's become an international figure. Nobel Prize and so forth and so on. It's not because of his knowledge of the external world or technology. It's what he embodies. Somebody just told me that, it was you, Betty Rose, that told me of his meeting with a Christian. A very dynamic person here in Sydney that met with him not long ago. And he asked the Dalai Lama, who are you? I'm a simple Buddhist monk. The man wasn't satisfied with that. Report an error

30:03 I know a lot of Buddhists. You're not quite like them. I'm sorry. Who are you? And he said, I am the teaching. Right? I am the teaching. And the man's response was, when he said that, I saw the face of God. Report an error

30:18 Quite impressive. That's where the progress was. Practicing meditation six hours a day starting at 3.30 in the morning. Do that for 60 years, see how it turns out. While living an immensely active way of life. How many 78-year-olds do you know who follow his kind of itinerary? And wind up just going joyful, radiating. Report an error

30:43 That's where the progress is. That's what the Tibetans admired. That's what they revere. That's what they worship. And not simply, oh, isn't he unique? Isn't it amazing that that one man has these qualities? No, he's showing us. That's why he keeps on saying, I'm a simple Buddhist monk because we all have that capacity. We all have that capacity. And he's not the only one. He's the only Dalai Lama for sure. He is unique. But if you meet other people, especially Tibetans who are seeped in that culture from childhood on, you find one after another, after another, after another, amazing beings, profound progress, profound knowledge. Report an error

31:17 But it's not obvious. Technology, the benefits of technology are in our face. It's so obvious. Get your brand new iPhone and whoa, you can see it right there, oh it does this, so it's faster, it does all this, oh cool, cool. Now I can, you know, you immediately, what you see is what you get, I mean the benefits are in your face. Report an error

31:34 And likewise for medicine, it's so wonderful, it's so obvious, it's evident. Scientific knowledge is very public, whereas the benefits of spiritual practice, very deep, transformative spiritual practice, they are there, absolutely real, but not so obvious. Report an error

31:50 So, So that's the complementarity between these two modes of knowledge. I think I'm going to wrap up here. But why there is, in short, why there's no science and technology of the Western style in Buddhism? It didn't start out with those theological premises of an absolute world out there, but rather the world always rising relative to the subject. Report an error

32:11 An observer participates the universe, which is now a hot item in quantum mechanics and quantum cosmology. That's core to Buddhism from the beginning, right? No incentive to push hedonic pleasure to the hilt. Oh, my computer's too slow. Oh, computer, where's my prayer wheel? It's going just fine, thank you. Report an error

32:31 No incentive, because all the emphasis overwhelmingly was on the inner, and that's why so many lay people were happy to support that portion of their population and give them enough till they survive. Everything was destroyed in Tibet. By 1980, there was not a monastery working. From 1980 until the last few decades, this phenomenal resurgence. It's only written by the Chinese putting a lid on it. Report an error

33:01 But it's the lay people coming right back and saying, this is the first thing, we want to rebuild our monasteries. I've seen this. I've been to Tibet four times. This is where their money goes. As soon as they have some surplus, let's build another monastery. Because they know that's the best investment for society. Not a new power plant, not damning another river. Report an error

33:18 Overgrazing and wiping out your grasslands. But no, let's develop more bodhisattvas. This is a bodhisattva factory. That's what monasteries are. Bodhisattva factories. Really good investment. And so it's complementary. And that is hedonic well-being, science, technology. They are great servants to supporting us in living meaningful lives. But the whole point of it is meaningful life, liberation, enlightenment. Report an error

33:47 So that science and knowledge can aid us. But of course we can turn that on its head, which happens. It's not an evil thing. They say, oh, meditation, good. How can I use that in the business so I can be more productive? How can I have less stress? How can I live longer? How can I have a more satisfying romantic life? How can I run faster? And so in a hedonic culture, when they hear about meditation, they say, oh, good, let me add it for my agenda. Report an error

34:10 And how can we make this lucrative? I'm sure there's some money in here someplace. And so that's how Dharma becomes subservient. To hedonic ideals. And it is. It happens a lot. It becomes simply a therapy to get over rough spots in our lives, to make saṃsāra a bit more bearable. Report an error

34:27 But that's not Dharma. You can call it whatever you like, but it's not Dharma. In Dharma, then, the whole of the hedonic, including all of science, not technology, at its best, is in the service of genuine happiness for as many people as possible. So this is a very different approach, but it's a complementary approach, and it's not antithetical. Report an error

34:46 There's nothing antithetical to science and technology. And the Dalai Lama has commented repeatedly that if scientists, through their very rigorous observations, measurements, analysis, if scientists can disprove any assertion in Buddhism, said, I will discard that. Just show me the compelling evidence. And I will discard the Buddhist belief in favor of evidence. Evidence is compelling, not simply tradition or the Buddha said or my teacher said or some great... Report an error

35:16 Buddhist sage said. And he actually means it. He does actually mean it. And so it's truth above all. Not simply trying to corroborate Buddhist truths, but find out what is true true, and not just Buddhist true. In terms of this final point, and then we'll have time for discussion, but if we look back at this triad, this ever so important triad of ethics, of foundation, then samādhi, mental balance, and then finally wisdom, one can say that if we draw an analogy, with scientific inquiry ethics is like having a well-equipped and clean laboratory like from neuroscience, something like that so all the instruments are there you're keeping it clean all the instruments are in good working order you're maintaining them well The technology you have and the utilization of that technology, that would be like shamatha, samādhi. Report an error

36:12 That's the technology. The ability internally to make sophisticated, refined, precise, reliable and replicable discoveries all depends on your internal technology and that has everything to do with your attention skills. And it's not just can you focus, but can you focus without polluting your observation with your junk, your assumptions, your ruminations, your biases, your prejudices, your preferences and so forth that are going to distort and tilt and warp. Report an error

36:43 Whatever observations you're making. Shantideva is about not only maintaining continuity, but clear and free of conceptual biases, including biases of belief and so forth. It is really designed to make authentic, replicable observations, regardless of your worldview. If all you're replicating, if all you're corroborating is Buddhist truth, then we call that indoctrination. Report an error

37:03 You don't need to meditate, just recite a lot. And so your laboratory is like the ethics. And then the mental balance. It's like the technology. And then using that technology, making measurements, observations, running experiments, that's your Vipassanā. That's the wisdom. That's the four applications of mindfulness. No ethics, then your technology, no laboratory, then you have no seat, no context for your instruments. Report an error

37:29 If the instruments are not well developed, you can't make good observations. You can't make observations, you won't make reliable discoveries. And so I think that's rather a meaningful parallel. And so here we are, we're going to assume for the time being, for these six days, that our ethics is good enough, maintain a very high level of courtesy and so forth. I think we're already doing that. Report an error

37:49 And then we'll be kind of working back and forth, just like the evolution of science, and that is science evolving hand in hand with technology. Science gives rise to better technology, that gives rise to better science and so forth. It's been a really marvelous agenda or strategy. Likewise in Buddhism, it certainly makes a lot of sense when one is well prepared ethically, motivation and so forth and so on, to go off for some time, when one feels the time is ripe and has a strong motivation, to go off for a year or two, however long it takes, and practice and achieve shamatha. Report an error

38:22 I won't explain exactly what that means right now, time is running out, but in other words, really to very finely hone your attention. And it's called Achieving Shamatha, where there's this radical transformation of the body also in terms of your whole energy system. The body becomes exceptionally pliant, supple, buoyant. Report an error

38:41 And that's from meditation without yoga. Yoga can help, but meditation actually can do it without yoga. So that's probably another reason they didn't have yoga. If you're really good at Shamatha, that's going to give you that suppleness, the lightness, the buoyancy of the body. But it's an inside job. It's by way of the subtle energies rather than by way of stretching and so forth and so on. Report an error

38:59 So it's not a refutation at all of yoga. I think there should be much more in Buddhism. But it is also true that there have been many, many great adepts who have achieved shamatha, and out of that they develop both physical and mental pliancy, buoyancy, malleability, and then on to the vipassanā. So in an ideal world, kind of classically speaking, you would lay a solid foundation of ethics, strong motivation, then practice and achieve shamatha, and now launch full scale into the practice of vipassanā. Report an error

39:30 The cultivation of liberation, and you realize nirvāṇa, realize bodhicitta, realize emptiness and become enlightened in one lifetime. For most of us in the meantime, many of us are not in a position to go off for years on end in solitary retreat as full-time professional contemplative. So then it just makes sense. Spend some time in shamatha practice, hone the mind, balance it, refine it, but don't just stop there, staying always in the shallow end of the pool. Report an error

39:58 Make your forays, make your expeditions out into the realm of Vipassanā to start. We shouldn't postpone that indefinitely. Go ahead and start and engage in your Vipassanā practice, the four applications of mindfulness. Go back to your shamatha, bolster that up a bit. Go back and apply it to your Vipassanā, gain more insights. Report an error

40:17 And then you'll find there's a synergy there. And the synergy, it's hard for me to stop because I find it so amazing. That's really it. It's not that I love to hear my own voice. I just, oh, this blows me away. Report an error

40:29 It turns out to be a synergy. Develop your shamatha. Of course that's going to augment your vipassanā. That kind of makes sense. But it turns out as you gain insights by way of vipassanā, that turns around and inspires and informs your shamatha practice. There's a synergy there. But it doesn't stop there. We start with ethics. But we know that ethics is not just following a bunch of rules. It's developing an ethical wisdom. Report an error

40:53 Ethical intelligence. Well, the more you've developed your shamatha, The clarity of mind, the mindfulness, the introspection, that's going to enhance your ethical sensibility. And likewise, the more you develop wisdom, that's going to enhance what is really conducive to genuine happiness and what is not. Report an error

41:10 So you say, whoa, in other words, the whole thing is synergistic. Ethics supporting samādhi and wisdom, wisdom supporting samādhi and ethics, samādhi supporting wisdom and ethics, they're all synergistically supporting each other. It's quite extraordinary. Report an error

41:26 So there it is. That's what we're about to do. That's what we've begun doing. Comments, questions, insights, observations, anything coming up from your side? Report an error

41:38 Are you stunned? I'm stunned. I'm just amazed at the majesty of it, the brilliance of it. And it's not just a cool idea, but it actually has worked for 25 hundred years in so many ways. Report an error

41:57 Yes, please. Please do. Yes, absolutely. Those are always the kind of top priority. Report an error

42:08 Please. Report an error

42:20 Yes. Report an error

42:48 Very good. Very practical. And it's somewhat practical or relevant here in a very quiet environment. It'll probably be a lot more relevant when you go home or wherever we're going. It's likely to be a more noisy environment. So very, very good. Report an error

43:09 One can ask, again, one can ask, why was, I'll put myself in your situation, why was I getting distracted by the tapping noise? And I can say, well, because it was relatively loud and it was catching my attention. It was capturing my attention. I kept on drawing my attention away. When I phrase it like that, I've just empowered the noise. Whereas another person sitting right next to you might have heard the same noise and said, noise? Report an error

43:35 It was boring. Why would I be distracted by that? It wasn't interesting at all. I heard it. Big deal. I just did my practice. So you can imagine. And another person might not hear it at all. So deeply immersed in samādhi, not even hear it at all. It does happen. And so the fact that a certain noise catches the attention. Report an error

43:53 It's because we're catchable. And we're catchable when we grasp onto the noise. This is a good example. And we can grasp onto it in various ways, but the two most common ones are we grasp onto it because we do find it interesting, somehow we like it, or because we don't like it. We find it irritating, disruptive. This is a meditational hall. Why couldn't they not have such tapping? I want to complain to somebody. Report an error

44:22 I want a place with no tapping noise, please. Really, what's wrong with these people? And so either because of irritation or because of desire, we get hooked and they say, and then I was hooked by it. No, we hooked it. And that's what's really distracting here. So whether it's traffic noise, whether it's a conversation in the next room, whether it's children playing, whatever the noise may be, shamatha practice the training of attention by definition. Report an error

44:49 Entails the exercise, the development of what psychologists call executive control. And that's multifaceted. But one element of executive control, this is top-down control of the mind. One element of that is selecting what to attend to. And there are a lot of psychological studies done on this theme in cognitive psychology. And that is where you have two stimuli coming in. Report an error

45:11 And you're asked in the study, please focus on this one. And they may be of equal interest or maybe even what you've been asked to focus on is less interesting than another one. But this is exactly, this is like working out in the shamatha gym. Yes, that's more interesting, but this is the one I've decided to, for reasons I know, I find this more profitable, more beneficial. And so I'm going to focus on this one. Report an error

45:33 And although this is impinging upon my senses, I will not deliberately give any attention to it. So it's partly just sheer willpower. Report an error

45:44 I know I am here. I know, or I sense, or I'm willing to entertain the hypothesis that such a tensile training, like mindfulness or breathing, is beneficial. And we'll learn more about it this afternoon. And it's simply an act of will, a selection. Tapping noise has already gotten boring, so there's no reason I should be dwelling on that. It's not useful. Report an error

46:07 And I choose to focus on this. Now we can make this more intimate. And that is, we ask, well, what's more distracting? On a regular basis, noises, primarily noises, because we can close our eyes, but it's harder to close the ears, even earpugs don't work that well. Report an error

46:27 What's more distracting, so the noises or rumination? Chat, chat, chat, chat, chat, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I think that's kind of obvious, right? And so I've got a little, I'll put it in kind of silly terms, I've got a little enemy out there, tap, tap, tap. Report an error

46:44 And I got a big enemy here. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So now which one should be more of a concern for me? The one I can't control. Because really, if it's tapping noise and it's in the air conditioning or something, you can't control it. Really, not for now, not in that session. There's nothing you can do about it. Let alone the sound of wind or traffic and so forth. And so, say, alright, why should I be bothered about something I can't control whatsoever? Report an error

47:08 Why don't I just do my best to ignore it? Because it's not interesting. And moreover, it's not threatening. And there's not something really good that I might get if I attend to it. I mean, it's kind of insignificant. But now inwardly, that which is much more cluttering the mind, distracting, pulling me away, agitating the mind, undermining my mental equilibrium, is rumination. Report an error

47:29 And mindfulness of breathing is hand-picked by the Buddha as being one of the most effective methods for overcoming rumination, involuntary, obsessive thinking. So why don't I just kind of take that bull by the horns and say, okay, now that's something I can do something about. And how I'm going to do it, How I'm going to address that is now not the common way. The common way is to bear down, maybe even shout a little bit. Report an error

47:53 Rumination, would you please shut up? Get a bit angry at it, frustrated at it. Bear down, try harder, silently, put duct tape over its mouth. Try to get it fiercely to shut up. And that's been tried many times by many people, including yogis. And what the yogis have found is that just makes them come back stronger. Report an error

48:12 You might have discovered that already. That winds up not being effective. Or effective only in the short term but with a lot of wear and tear. Whenever, this is a fundamental difference, good to mention now early on in the retreat, there are two fundamentally different strategies for developing attention skills including concentration. Report an error

48:31 And there's the approach that is very common out there with no Dharma. And it's common especially in certain professions that demand a very high level of concentration. Like jet fighter pilots, like air traffic controllers, like professional chess players, and there are a number of other professional musicians. There are a lot of professions, some of them very benign, like musicians and so forth. Report an error

48:56 Others not so benign. In which, if you don't have a high level of concentration, the effects will be negative and possibly catastrophic. And so, then there's a strong imperative. Now, for the next ten minutes, one hour, five hours, I have to be really concentrated. The stakes are very high. I'm flying a $30 million jet. That's pretty high. And so, what do we do? Well, hold on tight. Report an error

49:24 Strong sense of ego. Okay, I've got to be in control here. There's the mudrā. There's the hand gesture. And I will try. And I'll continue trying. And I won't let my mind be distracted. And I will maintain it. And I will maintain it. Thank goodness that's over. And then the jet fighter pilot, because I've spoken with one, very experienced. Report an error

49:44 He corroborated what I'd heard, but I got it from his lips, that after you've done that for about five hours in a cockpit, you need about 24 hours to recover from the damage you've done to your nervous system. About 24 hours. R and R. And then you can get back into the jet and do it all over again. And so psychologists and neuroscientists have studied this, and they found that the higher pitch of your attention, the more focused you are, the more effort it takes and the more stressful it is. Report an error

50:10 You get drained. And I know that in my early phases of meditation, I was trying the good old-fashioned way and I did exactly the same thing. Whether it's meditation or flying a jet, equally fatiguing, lots of wear and tear, getting really stressed out, drained, kind of wiped out feeling at the end of it. Report an error

50:26 So that's the hedonic approach, let's say. The hedonic approach to developing concentration. It worked for the short term. You can get the job done. But a lot of wear and tear. And you cannot sustain it. And you will not get much better. You will hit a ceiling for sure. And then the eudaimonic, to use the Greek term, or the Dharma way, is rather than starting out with a clenched fist, starting out with, okay, I'll try harder, I will try harder to accomplish my goal, releasing the sense of I, releasing the fist, releasing effort, and tapping into a deeper sense of relaxation than what you brought to the cushion. Report an error

51:01 So first of all, releasing, hence settling body, speech and mind in the natural state. Releasing, releasing, releasing the breath, letting go. Letting go of a strong sense of ambition of I am and I want to, releasing, releasing. And out of that sense of ease, of letting go, of relaxation, out of that, like cream coming to the surface of milk, letting stability, the inner stillness, emerge from that sense of ease and relaxation. Report an error

51:30 Of course, with some degree of effort, it's not simply effortless, but it's very carefully monitored effort, that we're not pushing too hard, which then starts to drain us again. Stresses out. So out of relaxation emerges the stability or the stillness of awareness, the continuity of awareness. And out of that emerges gradually the clarity, vividness, high definition, acuity of awareness. Report an error

51:54 But in the course of all of that, there will often not be an ideal circumstances of being totally quiet and comfortable and so forth for our shamatha practice, which means then we have to recognize, all right, what here could I actually influence? What here can I influence? Traffic noise, children playing, etc.? No, probably not. But what I can influence is that which is much more disturbing and much more commonly disturbing. Report an error

52:18 Basically through all the waking hours, rumination is just there assaulting our castle pretty much every minute of the day. Whereas children come and go, tapping noise comes and goes, traffic noise comes and goes, everything else comes and goes. Rumination is just relentless. Sometimes it won't even let us sleep. Just relentless. Report an error

52:37 And so this is why the Buddha highlighted this mindfulness of breathing. And a metaphor I like a lot, coming from California, where there are a fair number of cowboys, it's not the Wild West anymore, but, you know, we have a road, in my hometown, we have rodeos, rodeos in Santa Barbara. And a friend of mine, who is a big horse lady, she said, I want to take you to a rodeo. I said, okay. A few years back, I went to a rodeo. And what they do is, when they want to break the horse, They put a cinch around its belly down here. It's really uncomfortable for them. And then the rider gets up, and then he's going to break the horse, right? Report an error

53:16 And he's going to subdue the horse. And he's doing it the good old-fashioned cowboy way. And that is, you take the horse out and it tries to buck you off. And then it's the cowboy's will versus the will of the horse. And the cowboy has to prove that he's stronger and has more powerful will until eventually he breaks the spirit of the horse, subdues the horse, and then the horse, intimidated by him, does what he wants. Report an error

53:38 A good old-fashioned way. It makes for, you know, wow, he's not falling off. Oh, there he fell off. The horse won. Okay. But not for 15 seconds. Whatever it is. So there's one approach. And then anybody who's read the novel or seen the movie by the same name, The Horse Whispers, which is quite a lovely movie and an excellent novel, the movie was brought with Robert Redford, shows another approach, which is the approach we're taking here in subduing the wild stallion of the mind. Report an error

54:05 And that metaphor is used, it's a common metaphor in Buddhism. And that is, rather than trying to break it with sheer ironclad will and strong discipline and powerful posture, And macho machismo our way through. The horse whisperer approach is a gentling the horse, calming the horse, the horse whisperer. Report an error

54:30 So it's a very gentle approach. And then the horse is subdued and wants to do what you would like it to do. I want to recommend a movie. The horse whisperer is very nice. It's a Hollywood movie, very nice movie. But one that just blew me away. I'm practically crying all the way through. I mean, with joy. Report an error

54:46 I was really emotionally moved throughout the entire movie. It's a splendid movie. It's a Dharma movie by a person who probably doesn't know the word Dharma. And it's called Buck, B-U-C-K. Probably nobody's seen it, yeah? One person. Wasn't it amazing? Amazing movie. Splendid movie. It was 100 % Dharma. I won't give the whole story, but it is this man Buck, this American cowboy, quintessential American cowboy. Report an error

55:10 So there he is. And that's what he wanted to be. He wanted to become a cowboy, became a cowboy. But he learned from a master this whole art of the horse whisperer. And then he refined it, developed it. And you saw him in action. And you saw the love and the sensitivity he had for the horses he engaged with and for their owners and riders. Report an error

55:30 It was, once again, a package deal, remember? He was teaching both the owners of the horses and the horses. And when you saw him on his own horse, it's like he was a miracle worker. I was blown away. That when he was on his own horse that he had probably had from the time it was a foal, you could see him on the horse and you could hardly see him move. Report an error

55:53 You didn't see any big movements at all. But the horse would go backwards, forwards, sideways, do this and that and that. And he said, I know he's directing the horse. How's he doing it? And he was doing it. He wasn't claiming to be psychic. But it was so subtle and clearly that horse wanted to do what his rider wanted. Report an error

56:13 There was such a love. Right now emotion is coming up. Such an empathy. Such a caring by this man for the horses and their owners. So emotion comes up just remembering it. It was just so good. He's such a good man. Really such a good man. So what he did for his horses, that's what we should be doing with our minds. Report an error

56:35 With love, with empathy, with care, concern for our own well-being, the well-being of others. Gentle the mind. Don't try to break the mind. Because it's an inside job, you're breaking yourself. So that was a long answer, but a wonderful question. And it's always recognizing that what is really disturbing the mind is not other people. Report an error

56:55 This is a great big generalization, I think it's always true. What really disturbs the mind is not other people, or sounds, or the environment, or even our physical health. Unless it's brain damage, that disturbs the mind. But what really disturbs the mind are the mind disturbers. Mental afflictions. And they're defined as such, delusion, craving, hostility. They're defined as mental afflictions, klesha, because they lie at the root of disturbing the equilibrium of the mind. Report an error

57:27 That's the real core. Other people can catalyze, and they do. Other people can catalyze by obnoxious behavior and so forth. Or a woman, a beautiful woman, may catalyze a man's lust. So he becomes obsessed and becomes a stalker and so forth. She didn't do anything. She's just beautiful. But her appearance, maybe her mannerism and so forth, catalyzes the man's mental afflictions and he can't sleep at night and maybe engages in some really unwholesome behavior. Report an error

57:53 It can happen. She didn't do anything. Or maybe she did. But usually not, right? But all kinds of things can catalyze our mental afflictions, both in terms of craving as well as hostility. But what's really disturbing the mind is the mental afflictions themselves. So rather than trying to modify other people's behavior, modify the environment, stop doing that, you should start doing that, trying to be the master controller, the conductor of the symphony of the planet Earth. Report an error

58:19 As Shantideva says, if you've got a planet covered with thorns, you can either try to cover it with leather or you can put on a pair of shoes. And so likewise, train your own mind and the world is subdued. That is, it loses its ability to catalyze our mental afflictions, even if their behavior isn't modified. At least it doesn't arouse our own mental afflictions. So, you ask a fairly limited and very important question, you get a great big answer. Report an error

58:46 Because it's so relevant to everything else. Good. That brings us to 12 o 'clock. Enjoy your break, and what I would encourage is this quality of mindfulness, of engaged attentiveness. As much as you can, this is a major reason why we're maintaining silence. Eat mindfully, walk mindfully, rest mindfully, and maintain, if you will, so we derive as much benefit from this time together as possible, maintain just a peripheral awareness, out of the corner of your eye, so to speak, a peripheral awareness of in-breath, out-breath, as you're going about your two hours of leisure. Report an error

59:18 So maintain continuity, so when we reconvene at two o 'clock, we'll go right into meditation, it'll be a smooth transition. Report an error

59:26 So, enjoy your break. I'll see you too. Report an error

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Talk by B. Alan Wallace. Original at Vajrayana Institute via Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/FourApplicationsOfMindfulnessRetreat2013. Licensed CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. Transcript generated automatically and may contain errors; the audio is the authoritative version.

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