Transform Your Mind & Change Your Life Retreat - 7-Point Mind Training from Atisha (part 14)

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0:44 Broadly speaking, there are two approaches to achieving shamatha, introducing this indispensable ingredient so that all the other practices can be fully effective. And one of these, I would call using modern terminologies, called the developmental approach, where you're taking, to use some of the classic methods and metaphors, you're taking the wild, untamed elephant of your mind, which can be a weapon of mass destruction, and it can also be tremendously useful, beneficial to yourself and others. Report an error in the passage at 0:44 Highlight the passage at 0:44

1:16 You're taking this untrained, this wild elephant and you're subduing it by fastening the elephant of your mind with a rope of mindfulness to the stake planted firmly in the ground of your meditative object and then you try to get it to stay there. And you use a goad when it's misbehaving. So there's a method that is a developmental method because it's starting out simply taking note of observing the mind. Report an error in the passage at 1:16 Highlight the passage at 1:16

1:44 And saying, well, how is your mind? Is it relaxed or is it kind of uptight? And a lot of people would say, well, it's not very relaxed. I think I need to cultivate relaxation because my mind is very tense, agitated and so forth. And so we have something to cultivate then that we feel we really don't have much of. A sense of ease, relaxation and so forth. And then we can ask, well, is your mind calm or is it agitated? Report an error in the passage at 1:44 Highlight the passage at 1:44

2:04 Is it really focused, composed or is it agitated? It's very agitated. I need to cultivate and develop a quality I don't have much of. That is his inner stillness, stability, composure, and that. And then when you ask, okay, well, in your mind generally, is it really clear or is it kind of dull? And especially after it's been uptight and agitated a lot, it naturally falls into dullness. So then we say, okay, I've got a third quality to cultivate, the vividness, clarity, sharpness. Report an error in the passage at 2:04 Highlight the passage at 2:04

2:32 And so then kind of roll up our sleeves and say, okay, let's get to work and let's cultivate these three qualities that we have a little bit of, but there's clearly enormous room for improvement. And that method has worked for many, many people, for many, many generations. But I think over the last century or so, much less. Report an error in the passage at 2:32 Highlight the passage at 2:32

2:52 Much less. Just because the times, the times are agitated, they're tense, they're driven, they're hyperactive, especially in the world we live in. But now it's even in Tibet. And you go to Hlaze, it's just one more busy, bustling city, about 90 % Han Chinese, where the Tibetans are minority. Report an error in the passage at 2:52 Highlight the passage at 2:52

3:11 And it's just one more city. And it's just frenetic as any other city we've ever been into. And so it's even now in Tibet. That space, especially in cities, it's gone. And so when we have that type of mind that's kind of tense and driven and agitated and multitasking, if you take the heavy-handed approach, like the Bucking Bronco approach, to try to break your mind, you'll break yourself. Report an error in the passage at 3:11 Highlight the passage at 3:11

3:35 And the mind will probably get wrapped up tighter and tighter until you either push yourself into severe mental imbalance or you give up. And so then we need another approach if we have that type of mind. And this is why the Buddha, even 2,500 years ago, suggested this very gentle approach of releasing and releasing. It's still in the classic teachings, like in Theravāda tradition, it still has a clear referent. Report an error in the passage at 3:35 Highlight the passage at 3:35

3:58 You are focusing your attention on the breath. But we're taking a different approach, a different interpretation. The other one's fine. It's good. It's worked a lot. But living in the 21st century, I must say I'm just enormously drawn to Dzogchen. And there are properties around Dzogchen. I think I mentioned them last night. When times are really, really degenerate, that's when Dzogchen will prove itself to be the most powerful. When we're wildly, crazily young, the big macho conquer mountains, conquer this, exploit this. Report an error in the passage at 3:58 Highlight the passage at 3:58

4:30 All the, just the whole thing. I mean, nobody at Westerners ever looks at a mountain and they say, let's conquer it. That's a crazy notion. And you've conquered it by climbing to the top. Report an error in the passage at 4:30 Highlight the passage at 4:30

4:40 You've seen photos of Mount Everest, right? You conquered it? You look like a little flea up there. I conquered you, mountain. It's a very weird attitude. It's very Western. Now it's becoming global. And so, a complementary approach. Report an error in the passage at 4:40 Highlight the passage at 4:40

4:57 And it is a complementary approach. It's not better or worse, but it's complementary, as yin is complementary to yang. You can't say one is simply better than the other. But that is a discovery approach, where you do what we've been doing over the last couple of days. You release the grasping, having settled the body, the respiration, and you're coming to the mind, and you just release your identification with the activities, the rising and passings of the mind. Report an error in the passage at 4:57 Highlight the passage at 4:57

5:27 And you rest at a deeper level. You just rest in awareness of just in that sheer cognizance, that sheer luminosity. You're just resting awareness and resting there, releasing all grasping and identification with the perturbations of the mind. Then you're observing the agitation of the mind from a still perspective. And then sometimes you see the mind getting dull and you observe the dullness of the mind with clarity. Report an error in the passage at 5:27 Highlight the passage at 5:27

5:59 Now, just as a traveler, I travel a lot and go through many, many time zones. I've experienced this many times. I'll travel from just the West Coast to Europe. There's a difference of eight or nine hours. That's a lot. And so you're pretty much topsy-turvy. And if I haven't slept much and all of that, then on a number of occasions over the last years of traveling, I get off the plane, I get to my hotel room, as I did in Hong Kong about three o 'clock the other morning, at three o 'clock in the morning, and knowing I needed to teach the next day. Report an error in the passage at 5:59 Highlight the passage at 5:59

6:28 And I can look at my mind and I see, wow, my mind is really dull and stupid. And I'm seeing that very clearly and intelligently. No big deal here, but it's definitely possible. You see with complete clarity, oh, my mind's really dull. I wouldn't try to do any heavy lifting with my mind right now because it's really stupid. So I'm going to intelligently make the decision not to make any big decisions and just let my mind get clear. Report an error in the passage at 6:28 Highlight the passage at 6:28

6:53 Simple point. I mean, this is just traveling. That's not some meditative realization. But it is simply true that you can, with clarity, be aware of the dullness of your own mind. And so when you settle in this, where you're just resting in the awareness of awareness, then it's not a matter of cultivating a sense of ease and relaxation. Report an error in the passage at 6:53 Highlight the passage at 6:53

7:14 Because in that release of all grasping, hope, fear, desire, aversion, it's releasing it just like that, like that. Then what results when you just go, Report an error in the passage at 7:14 Highlight the passage at 7:14

7:28 you're relaxed. You're not cultivating it. It's what's left when you simply release all the stuff you're grasping to, which is stressing you out. Report an error in the passage at 7:28 Highlight the passage at 7:28

7:40 And so then you discover relaxation. And then you discover it deeper and deeper and deeper levels. In that exact same movement of releasing all grasping, the core quintessential instruction is rest your awareness without distraction, without being carried away, without grasping onto. Any of the subjective impulses in the mind, when you do that, not distracted, off to appearances, objects of the mind, carried away, but in terms of the subjective impulses coming up, the thoughts, desires, memories, emotions, coming up more this way rather than presenting to you, they come up and they invite you, metaphorically, they invite you to identify with them. Report an error in the passage at 7:40 Highlight the passage at 7:40

8:24 And I am upset, I am want, I am angry, I am sad, I... I'm agitated. That's the identification. It's called cognitive fusion. And when they come up, it's like a very strong invitation. You know, like, come with me. Almost like a seduction. Like, come with me. I'll enfold you. And when you don't accept the invitation, you say, my dance card is full. Report an error in the passage at 8:24 Highlight the passage at 8:24

8:48 Dance on your own. Then in the release of identification with the agitation of the mind, the thoughts, desires, memories, they just come and they introduce themselves. Hello, would you like to dance? She's a nun. She says, no. I don't care who you are, Brad Pitt. Report an error in the passage at 8:48 Highlight the passage at 8:48

9:10 Well, maybe an exception. Report an error in the passage at 9:10 Highlight the passage at 9:10

9:14 Just once, one spin around. We don't want to pick on her. But whatever is coming up, whether it's something that really bugs you or something that seduces you, whatever it is, your dance card is full and you just... You're not even making it go away, you simply don't rise to the bait. You don't identify with it. But that takes, you must be very loose for that. Report an error in the passage at 9:14 Highlight the passage at 9:14

9:40 You have to be really loose, so loose, casual. Comes up, looking around for like a parasite, looking for some host to glom onto. And then the parasite finding no host, then just dissolves away of its own accord. You don't have to hit it with a flyswatter. You don't have to hit it, you don't have to antidote it, you don't have to make it go away. Report an error in the passage at 9:40 Highlight the passage at 9:40

10:01 It has its own half-life. And so you discover relaxation, you discover stillness, stability. You're not developing it. It's what's left when you're not identifying with those activities of the mind that destabilize it. It's what's left. And then clarity. Well, if you don't identify with, you don't cognitively fuse with the dullness, the torpor and so forth. If you're vividly aware of dullness when it comes up. Report an error in the passage at 10:01 Highlight the passage at 10:01

10:31 Then your mind may be dull and your awareness may be crystal clear. And so not fusing with, not identifying with, not feeling, I'm tired, I'm dull, I'm... No, leave it, get a bit of rest. And just rest there and let the bright light of your awareness illuminate the dullness of the mind. Then you're discovering clarity. Report an error in the passage at 10:31 Highlight the passage at 10:31

10:50 So it's discover all the way. And so you're not achieving shamatha, you're discovering shamatha. Because these are the three qualities. First sequentially and then synergistically. That you're cultivating or, one can say, unveiling, discovering along this path. So, I must say, as I've been introduced to a wide variety of shamatha methods over 45 years, this one is kind of a keeper. Report an error in the passage at 10:50 Highlight the passage at 10:50

11:15 It's so gentle. It's so gentle. And it comes from releasing effort rather than bearing down. Bearing down. So I cited you verbatim, the bullets, the Buddhas, for... Report an error in the passage at 11:15 Highlight the passage at 11:15

11:32 Staccato, just points. Breathing in long, I know that I breathed long, and so forth. So you know exactly what he said. And it's there in the Pāli Canon, it's also there in the Sanskrit. So it's commonality. A Saṅgha's commentary on this practice cites the same bullet points as what a Gosa does from the Pāli Canon in Theravāda. It's the same. Report an error in the passage at 11:32 Highlight the passage at 11:32

11:49 Interpretations are different, but what they're interpreting is the same. And so I raise some questions about this practice that one can do as a... A person living in the modern era that you couldn't do 200 years ago in Tibet. And they're really simple. There's nothing really deep about it. But 200 years ago, even 100 years ago in Tibet, nobody had wristwatches. Report an error in the passage at 11:49 Highlight the passage at 11:49

12:11 Especially monks. Maybe a rich aristocrat here and there living in Asa would have their Rolex. But it wasn't very useful because nobody else had a watch. So you'd go around, what time is it? You have the only watch in town. You know what time it is and that's, what's that on your wrist? So it's kind of one wristwatch. It's kind of like... Report an error in the passage at 12:11 Highlight the passage at 12:11

12:29 What exactly does that tell you about the time, you know, when nobody else knows what the time is, because it doesn't mean anything, except it's daytime. Did you miss that? The sun is setting. Oh, sun setting time. So the point being that, some time ago when I was in retreat, I was doing this practice, which I've been doing for 45 years. Report an error in the passage at 12:29 Highlight the passage at 12:29

12:50 I just got curious in a way that I hadn't been curious before. And that is when slipping into that, breathing in short, one knows I breathe in short, breathing out short, I know I breathe out short, and finding that flow, finding just, it was consistent, the frequency was quite obviously not getting shorter and shorter, it wasn't sporadic, it wasn't going long again, it was just short, short, short, short, shallow breathing right on through. Report an error in the passage at 12:50 Highlight the passage at 12:50

13:10 I just got curious, simple point, and that is what's the frequency? How many cycles per minute? And it's, all you need is this, you know, one of these, set a one minute timer and then count. So I got curious. And I did it a number of times, and it came out to 15 cycles per minute. 14, 15, 16, 15, 15, 16, 14. I just all averaged out right to 15 a minute, which is quite short then. Report an error in the passage at 13:10 Highlight the passage at 13:10

13:34 You know that it means only four seconds for a complete inhalation, exhalation. Shallow. So there's no hyperventilation. There's no disturbance or agitation. It's just very shallow. But of course it's short. Two seconds in, two seconds out. Very rhythmic. It was just interesting. Not profound, but just it had to be something, and that's what I found. Report an error in the passage at 13:34 Highlight the passage at 13:34

13:51 This is just what I found. No big deal. And I'm certainly not the standard, oh, be like me. I'm just telling you, this is what I found. And having found that, then I recall that from any Vajrayana teachings I'd received, that there is one number commonly cited, and you remember it now, of how many cycles of breath does a person have in a 24-hour period, when your breath is just settling in its natural rhythm. Report an error in the passage at 13:51 Highlight the passage at 13:51

14:16 You're not hyperventilating, you're not working out, running a marathon and so forth. But just when your breath is settled in its natural rhythm, how many breaths per 24 hours? It's 21,600. It comes up in Dzogchen, it comes up in Vajrayana, it's everywhere. It's one number, 21,600. Do the arithmetic, and it turns out to be 15 cycles per minute. There it is, so the same number. Report an error in the passage at 14:16 Highlight the passage at 14:16

14:40 I thought that was interesting. Curious. And what I and I'm sure many other people have found is you go deeper into the samādhi, let alone in some high state, but just kind of getting into flow. That it really feels as if your body is falling asleep, just so relaxed, so completely relaxed. And then the breathing is getting this very, very gentle rhythm. Report an error in the passage at 14:40 Highlight the passage at 14:40

15:03 And you are seeking to release the breath so completely that you're breathing as if deep asleep. That's the idea. No control. No regulation. Just let it go. And then you find also you just go deeper and deeper while you're keeping the light on of your awareness, bright and clear and still. You're releasing all the activities of the mind and they just wind up calming down. So fewer thoughts, fewer perturbations, fewer memories, fantasies, the whole system calming down, as if your mind is falling asleep. Report an error in the passage at 15:03 Highlight the passage at 15:03

15:34 So it's really as if you're falling asleep lucidly, with the body falling asleep, the mind gradually falling asleep, but your awareness bright and clear and not identifying with the body or the mind, just resting in its own place. Report an error in the passage at 15:34 Highlight the passage at 15:34

15:50 So then I got curious, and it's just my experience, I think it shows many people's experience. And it's also, you find that if you do this a lot, you just don't need to sleep as much. So I was very happy last night. I got to meditate a lot yesterday, went to bed, slept five hours, fresh as a daisy. Then I just started meditating. Report an error in the passage at 15:50 Highlight the passage at 15:50

16:08 I was really happy to get up into my own rhythm, because I went to bed at ten, woke up at three, and then just continue. That was really nice. I'm happy. I'd like to start the day that way. And if you're meditating a fair amount during the daytime, you don't need to sleep as much at night. Or if you're a really accomplished meditator, as I am not, but like Lama Zopa Rinpoche, then you don't need to sleep five hours a night. Report an error in the passage at 16:08 Highlight the passage at 16:08

16:27 You just don't need to sleep at all. And that's true for a very accomplished meditator. I'm not one of those. But four or five hours is, you know, I like it. I like to wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. And so the point here being that I just then got curious not too long ago. There's been so much research on sleep and people observing sleeping bodies and what's easier to monitor than what's the rate of respiration of a person in deep stage 4 non-REM sleep, the deepest sleep that we experience throughout the night. Report an error in the passage at 16:27 Highlight the passage at 16:27

17:01 And what's the frequency of breath? Is it shallow? Is it deep? What is it? Or is it sporadic? And it turns out it's rhythmic and it's 15 cycles per minute. So that was kind of interesting. And what the Buddha is suggesting here, so that's just what I found. Report an error in the passage at 17:01 Highlight the passage at 17:01

17:17 And what the Buddha is suggesting here, if this is right, is you're slipping into this natural rhythm of 15 cycles and then it just gets shallower and shallower and shallower. Now I'd like to move on a little bit to the point of what Atisha is making here, which he makes very clearly in his other classic text, much better known text, in this lamp for the path to enlightenment, his lamrim, his first lamrim, which was studied by all schools of divine Buddhism eventually, is the root lamrim text for all four schools. Report an error in the passage at 17:17 Highlight the passage at 17:17

17:47 And the point he makes very clearly there, and it's here too, you simply have to know what he's saying, and that is that in order for the later practices, the ultimate bodhicitta, relative bodhicitta, to be fully effective, first let stability be achieved and then reveal the mystery of the nature of existence, of emptiness, the middle way, and reveal the mystery of the fundamental transcendent dimension of awareness itself, Buddha mind, pristine awareness, Rigpa. Report an error in the passage at 17:47 Highlight the passage at 17:47

18:15 That's the mystery. But let it be revealed when you're bringing your clean cutlery and bowl to the restaurant. Don't be a grubby one. So let stability, let the mind be finely tuned, very well balanced, very stabilized, and bring that mind, like a bowl, to the teachings he's about to give on ultimate bodhicitta, and then your awareness will hold it, and you'll be able to totally immerse yourself in it single-pointedly. Report an error in the passage at 18:15 Highlight the passage at 18:15

18:42 That requires, if you derive the full benefit of Vipassanā, the teachings on Bajyamaka, perfection of wisdom, Mahamudra Dzogchen, to derive it, it's just unequivocal, it's not an opinion, it's the way things are, you must have achieved shamatha, which is technically speaking called access to the first jhāna, or threshold to the first jhāna. Report an error in the passage at 18:42 Highlight the passage at 18:42

19:01 That's bare minimum. Tsongkhapa says this, it's widely accepted in all schools of Tibetan Buddhism. Report an error in the passage at 19:01 Highlight the passage at 19:01

19:08 And when you achieve that, again, there's complete uniformity here. Theravāda, Mahāyāna, Vajrayana, they all say when you achieve that, when you actually achieve Samatha, you cross the threshold into the Vajjana. You haven't fully achieved it, but you've gotten through the door, crossed the threshold. It's that that's when the locus of your awareness shifts from the desire realm, the one we're very familiar with, into the form realm. Report an error in the passage at 19:08 Highlight the passage at 19:08

19:35 And it's unequivocal there. That's what happens. But that means when your awareness is immersed in the form realm, you're no longer attending to phenomena, appearances and so forth in the desire realm. You can't be in two places at once. Your awareness is either immersed in the desire realm or it's immersed in the form realm. If you go much, much subtler, you'll go through all the fourth yanas and enter into the formless realm. Report an error in the passage at 19:35 Highlight the passage at 19:35

19:59 But that means you disengage from the form realm. So these whole dimensions of existence, they were all very well explored before the Buddha ever came along. In other words, this was an extremely highly developed civilization. It may as well be from another planet compared to where we are now. These words don't even mean anything in English. Report an error in the passage at 19:59 Highlight the passage at 19:59

20:17 And so the point being here, that when you cross that threshold and you've fully achieved shamatha, as Tsongkhapa describes and so on, all the other greats, that you have completely disconnected for the time being from all appearances of the desired realm, your body, your environment and so forth, because you've slipped into a subtler dimension of existence. Report an error in the passage at 20:17 Highlight the passage at 20:17

20:37 So something that kind of caught my attention when I was reading and translating Asanga's interpretation of this practice about 30 years ago, just about exactly 30 years ago, was that he is saying, do attend to the fluctuations of prāṇa within the body. But these are, this is within the desire realm. They're fluctuations within your body. So if you're still attending to those fluctuations... Report an error in the passage at 20:37 Highlight the passage at 20:37

21:05 How could you, and he says, this is the ticket, this is the method that will take you all the way to achieving first jhāna, but actually even the second, third and fourth. During this method, mindfulness of breathing. And the Buddha himself is very clear. Mindfulness of breathing can take you all the way not just to achieving shamatha and crossing the threshold into the form realm, but you can fully achieve the first jhāna and second and third and fourth practicing mindfulness of breathing. Report an error in the passage at 21:05 Highlight the passage at 21:05

21:29 So I just wonder, how is that possible if you're attending to tackle sensations that are in the desire realm? The realm we're familiar with. And then some clarity came not too long ago with drawing from earlier knowledge and then later knowledge. And that is, here's a well-established scientific fact. It's not in doubt. And that is, when you're in the midst of a dream, lucid or non-lucid, but it becomes very clear if you are lucid, that is, you're dreaming and you know you're dreaming, where it turns out to be the case, and it was a scientific discovery. Report an error in the passage at 21:29 Highlight the passage at 21:29

22:01 I never read this in any Tibetan literature. Is that if you're in the dream, you may very well be breathing. Usually we will be. You probably have some kind of a body and you're breathing. And you're breathing in and out. Of course there's no oxygen. So you're not really breathing as we breathe. Because there's no oxygen in the dream. Because there's nothing physical in the dream. Report an error in the passage at 22:01 Highlight the passage at 22:01

22:21 So one of the quirks of especially lucid dreaming is you find you can breathe underwater. Because there's no water in the dream. And there's no less air under the water than there is above the water. Because there's no air above or below. So you can breathe underwater. Or you can even close your mouth and hold your nose and still breathe. But you do breathe, commonly. If you have any sense of being embodied in the dream, you're still breathing. Report an error in the passage at 22:21 Highlight the passage at 22:21

22:45 Well, here's a scientific discovery. It's very well established. And it's quite strange that the cycle of your breathing, of your body lying in bed with the oxygen and the lungs and breathing fast or slow, whatever, the cycle, the rhythm of your body breathing in bed Of which you have no awareness whatsoever when you're immersed in a dream. The cycle of your breathing of the physical body lying in bed is exactly the same rhythm as the rhythm of your breathing in the dream. Report an error in the passage at 22:45 Highlight the passage at 22:45

23:15 Where your body is not physical and you're not breathing air. But if in a dream, and these experiments have been done, you're in a lucid dream and you're given the instruction before you go in. When you're in the dream, send us a message and you can do that. To let the researchers know that you're lucid now. It's very easy to do. Report an error in the passage at 23:15 Highlight the passage at 23:15

23:33 So you know you're lucid, they know you're lucid, so you're all on the same page. And then you say, okay, when you become lucid and you signal this, hold your breath. Hold your breath, you know, for like something in 15 seconds, whatever, something easy. And lo and behold, the body lying in bed holds its breath. Breathe fast. Report an error in the passage at 23:33 Highlight the passage at 23:33

23:50 The body in the bed light breathes fast. And so even though you're unaware of your body, have no awareness of it whatsoever, no tactile sensations from your body in bed are coming into your dreaming experience. You're still aware of the rhythm of your body, of the body breathing, the one lying in bed, even though you have no awareness of the body lying in bed. That's strange, but it turns out to be true. Report an error in the passage at 23:50 Highlight the passage at 23:50

24:14 And that's well-known. Something less well-known, but I've seen enough evidence that I'm persuaded it's true. It turns out, of course, here's something unequivocally true, that as you can be lucid in a dream, be fully cognizant, fully aware that you're dreaming while you're dreaming, you can also be in deep, dreamless sleep. Report an error in the passage at 24:14 Highlight the passage at 24:14

24:32 And be clearly aware that you're in deep, dreamless sleep. That's also possible. So lucid, dreamless sleep. Not a whole lot going on, but vividly aware of not much at all. Because there's just a sheer vacuity, which we'll call later the substrate. And this consciousness of which you are aware of, or conscious of that substrate, I translate it as substrate consciousness. Report an error in the passage at 24:32 Highlight the passage at 24:32

24:56 Why not? And this is the translation of Alaya Vijayana. But according to Dzogchen, which is completely compatible with the middle wave view and so forth, there's nothing to refute here, because there's no philosophy. We're just giving a name to what is experienced. And you experience this in deep dreamless sleep, where all that is left of your mind when you're in stage four non-REM sleep is just a flow of awareness. Report an error in the passage at 24:56 Highlight the passage at 24:56

25:20 And it's not your mind, not male, female, old, young, eastern or western. It's just that flow of this subtle continuum of consciousness. That's all that's left in deep dream and sleep. But you can be lucidly aware of resting there. And that with which you are aware is the substrate consciousness and that of which you are aware is the substrate, which is just sheer vacuity, a space devoid of appearances. Report an error in the passage at 25:20 Highlight the passage at 25:20

25:43 Now what's very interesting here, a bit mysterious, but then not so mysterious if we remember just the earlier point, While dreaming, you can be aware of the rhythm of the breath in the body lying in bed, even though you're completely unaware of the body lying in bed. Rhythm. It's just rhythm. That's what you're aware of. But not by way of attending to tactile sensations, just the rhythm itself. Like a disembodied rhythm, right? Report an error in the passage at 25:43 Highlight the passage at 25:43

26:07 Or embodied, but in a dream body, which isn't even physical. Well, you may see where this is going. It turns out to be the case. I have enough data points that I'm sure it's true, but it needs more research. It's that if you're in lucid, dreamless sleep, Experience the sheer vacuity of appearances, but you're brightly awake. You can still be, if you turn your attention to it, you can still be aware of the rhythm of the breath, even though you're unaware of any tactile sensations at all. Report an error in the passage at 26:07 Highlight the passage at 26:07

26:33 And that might sound like a logical inconsistency until you go back to lucid dreaming, and it was already true there. There you had appearances, they were dream appearances, but even those turn out not to be important. You can be aware of the rhythm even when you're resting in a sheer vacuity. So, If that's true, then as you go into this practice, your awareness as you go subtler and subtler can disengage entirely from the tactile sensations throughout the body, which are your clear indicator at a coarse level of the rhythm of the respiration. Report an error in the passage at 26:33 Highlight the passage at 26:33

27:08 You can withdraw your awareness from the tactile sensations, withdraw from the desire realm and just stay very gently with the rhythm. And you can go right into the substrate consciousness, sustain the awareness of the rhythm. Even while you've lost all contact with the physical body and the desired realm. And then you can achieve the first jhāna, but you can actually achieve the second, the third and fourth just attending to the rhythm as it gets subtler and subtler and subtler to the vanishing point. Report an error in the passage at 27:08 Highlight the passage at 27:08

27:39 So I thought that was a bit interesting. When you do this practice, it's a Dzogchen approach to mindfulness of breathing where like 80 % of your awareness is just resting in awareness, which is very Dzogchen. But you are maintaining this peripheral awareness just of the rhythm of the breath, then it's quite clear to me that you can use this method and go all the way to achieve shamatha. Report an error in the passage at 27:39 Highlight the passage at 27:39

28:01 Quite clear for the above reasons, right? But there's another choice you can make at any time, and that is everything really calms down. And your senses, when you are going fairly far along the path of shamatha, your senses are starting to implode. So I heard somebody speak just a couple of days ago at a very short retreat. Report an error in the passage at 28:01 Highlight the passage at 28:01

28:21 A woman saying, well, as I'm going into samādhi, this is like a five-day retreat. She's saying, I'm finding my visual field go blank. And her eyes are perfectly good. And is that a concern? I said, no, congratulations. Because your awareness is being withdrawn from the visual field as you're going purely into the mental. So you're getting no signal in the visual field. Report an error in the passage at 28:21 Highlight the passage at 28:21

28:42 Your eyes are open, your retina, visual cortex, all operating clearly. But what is not happening is awareness is not spilling over into. The visual field. So she's getting a blank screen. I thought that was quite remarkable in just a few days. Many people experience, as they go deeper and deeper, that awareness withdraws from the auditory field. Report an error in the passage at 28:42 Highlight the passage at 28:42

29:02 So even if there's noise in the environment and the ears are working perfectly well, awareness is withdrawn from the auditory. So the ripples in the atmosphere are there, but not sound. Because sound is illuminated by awareness and you're not giving any. Awareness is going purely into the mental. Tsongkhama makes very, very clear. Report an error in the passage at 29:02 Highlight the passage at 29:02

29:22 He speaks with such authority here. As you go deeper and deeper along this path to Samatha, that your awareness is also withdrawn from the somatic field. So the deeper you go, you have less and less a sense of being embodied at all. Tactical sensations generally are just fading out. Not because they're going someplace, just the light of awareness is no longer illuminating that field, because it's all being channeled into one out of six domains of experience, which is purely mental. Report an error in the passage at 29:22 Highlight the passage at 29:22

29:52 As you find your senses gradually shutting down, you have two choices. They're both really good choices. But the straight practice is called shamatha without a sign, shamatha without a support, or simply awareness of awareness, with no reference to the breath at all, is doing the practice we've been doing, but without the trainer wheels, without giving any attention, even a little bit, to the ebb and flow of the breath, and just saying, I don't need training wheels, I'm just going to stay on the bike and just rest right in awareness of awareness and not deliberately giving any attention at all to the rhythm of the breath. Report an error in the passage at 29:52 Highlight the passage at 29:52

30:32 Or you can make that decision at any time and just rest in awareness of awareness of awareness of awareness and then you've stopped practicing mindfulness of breathing even in a Dzogchen mode and you're just practicing shamatha without a support, without a sign, without an object. And you're simply resting in the awareness of awareness. And then it's like a black hole, but a happy black hole. And that is, you know of a black hole, that it's got so much gravitational pull that it even sucks in light, right? Report an error in the passage at 30:32 Highlight the passage at 30:32

31:03 It sucks in everything nearby. And if a light goes in, it doesn't get out because it's sucked inside. So you can't look at a black hole and see something. It's just a sheer absence of appearances, right? Because it sucks in all the light from the adjacent area. Well, this is like a really happy black hole, and that is your awareness is being so drawn into one out of six domains of experience, the mental, that it's drawing in all the light of awareness that would otherwise flow out to the visual, maybe the olfactory, the tactile, the auditory, and just drawing them all in, like that. Report an error in the passage at 31:03 Highlight the passage at 31:03

31:33 But it's not pulling it in, it's just releasing all the centrifugal force that tends to draw the awareness out. Release that, and then naturally, just like naturally falling asleep. The awareness just all converges into the mental, draws all the light of awareness into the mental. All the five sensory domains just go no signal, no signal, no appearances at all, and you slip right into just purely mental awareness. Report an error in the passage at 31:33 Highlight the passage at 31:33

32:01 And then you find, having gone down the rabbit hole of all the senses imploding into mental awareness, into this field of mental experience, then along the same course, all the activities of the mind. The thoughts, memories, emotions, desires, all the stuff, all the activity of the mind, they're also all dissolving, dissolving, dissolving, becoming just evaporating. Report an error in the passage at 32:01 Highlight the passage at 32:01

32:27 And so all the kind of kinetic energy of the mind, so to speak, all the activity, all dissolving into pure potential energy, to use a metaphor, and all that dissolving into awareness. So, you are aware of your feelings, The field of experience has become purely mental and that mental domain is not a tight space, it's not inside your head, it's open, it's expansive, but it's becoming more and more sparsely populated by anything until the mind has completely settled in its natural state and all the activities of your mind have now dissolved and your mind has collapsed, imploded or melted into its underlying ground. Report an error in the passage at 32:27 Highlight the passage at 32:27

33:09 And that is this, in Pāli, it's called the Bhavaṅga, the Grounded Becoming. It's called the Subtle Continued Mental Consciousness, Galupa. And it's called the Substrate Consciousness, or Alai Vijnana in Dzogchen. They're all referring to exactly the same thing. Just different terminology. But you're slipping into this state where now we know that it's effortless. Report an error in the passage at 33:09 Highlight the passage at 33:09

33:32 Anybody who's seen the winding road with the elements and so forth, you remember the flame? How it's big at the beginning and it goes out entirely? At about stage 8 and 9, there's no effort. You go into this state and you effortlessly enter and you effortlessly sustain. And you can sustain for hours. Report an error in the passage at 33:32 Highlight the passage at 33:32

33:48 So the effort's gone down to zero. The stability, the stillness of the awareness has become simply unfluctuating. And the clarity is unprecedented. It's not just clear. It's like going from a 10-watt bulb to a 1,000-watt bulb. Because the radiance, the clarity of your own awareness now is completely unveiled. This is not Buddha nature. Report an error in the passage at 33:48 Highlight the passage at 33:48

34:07 It's not Rigpa. But it's the ground state from which your mind arises whenever you go from deep sleep into dreaming, deep sleep into the waking state. But here you've illuminated that ground state by hours, maybe weeks, months or even years of training in shamatha. So when you get there, all veils of darkness, of dullness have been cleared away, which doesn't happen when you fall asleep. It tends to be veiled. Here you go into that same dimension of consciousness, but totally unveiled. Report an error in the passage at 34:07 Highlight the passage at 34:07

34:34 And you're just resting in the sheer luminosity of your own awareness, which is cognizant, it's clear and radiant. But now yogis of all traditions, it has nothing to do with your belief system, religion, theistic, non-theistic or whatever. Yogis for centuries have made a discovery, having accessed this. Again, Buddhas, non-Buddhas, all kinds of people have accessed it. That when you come to that state, that dimension of consciousness, that flow of awareness that is completely drawn into itself. Report an error in the passage at 34:34 Highlight the passage at 34:34

35:02 That it is luminous, that's for sure. But there are two other qualities that yogis commonly report on. It's been going for centuries. It's actually three total. And the first is, as you're resting in this state, with total clarity, relaxed, still and clear, that there comes right out of that an unprecedented degree of bliss. Report an error in the passage at 35:02 Highlight the passage at 35:02

35:23 Of bliss. And it's not stimulus-driven. You're not thinking of some happy thought, or you're not thinking of Buddha, you're not thinking of a guru, or anything like that. It's just bliss without an object. And it's just coming out. It is a symptom. It's a symptom of a mind that is superbly balanced. Just like a body that is extremely well, like an Olympic gymnast body, who's not damaged his body. Report an error in the passage at 35:23 Highlight the passage at 35:23

35:45 It probably feels really good to have that kind of body, I would imagine. But this is much beyond that. It's the suppleness, the malleability, remember the term from Tsongkhapa's teachings, that there's just this utter fine-tuning of the mind and the symptom affectively, what does it feel like? It's blissful. That's the first quality. And it's blissful, it has nothing to do with any particular stimulation, it's just by nature manifesting blissfully. The second one is luminosity, sheer clarity and vividness. Report an error in the passage at 35:45 Highlight the passage at 35:45

36:14 And the third one is non-conceptuality. Stillness, complete stillness. No perturbation, no exactation by thoughts, memories and so forth. So it's blissful, it's still, it's non-conceptual. But most importantly, it's pliable, malleable, ready to be put to work for the most important things you can. And the cultivation of bodhicitta, ultimate and relative, would be really strong candidates. So that's a little introduction to Samatha. Report an error in the passage at 36:14 Highlight the passage at 36:14

36:47 I'd like to read, I'd like to take a break. Let's do that first. It's 3.35, so let's take a break, come back, let's go right back to the practice. But we're going to spend the afternoon on this because tomorrow we're off into the deep waters of Ultima Bodhicitta. It doesn't get anything deeper than that. But as much as we can, if we can approximate by taking full advantage of today and approximating, cultivating or unveiling these qualities, relaxation, stillness and clarity, then tomorrow you'll bring at least somewhat, you will at least begin to clean your pots, your cutlery, your bowls. Report an error in the passage at 36:47 Highlight the passage at 36:47

37:22 And so tomorrow morning when we go into the teachings, very quintessential, really short, ultimate bodhicitta, then relative bodhicitta, that we'll be hopefully somewhat prepared to receive those teachings from Atisha. So it's now 3.35, so let's come back at 5 minutes to the hour. We'll go right back to practice. Report an error in the passage at 37:22 Highlight the passage at 37:22