Transform Your Mind & Change Your Life Retreat - 7-Point Mind Training from Atisha (part 21)

0:27 There are many aspects of the Dharma that are just extremely interesting, like lucid dreams and so forth, and some very profound nature of pristine awareness and all of that. It's important never to forget the fact that all of these teachings, without exception, all the teachings of the Buddha, these various currents of his tradition, are all addressing fundamental issues that we already care about. Report an error in the passage at 0:27 Highlight the passage at 0:27

0:51 And that is, it's addressing the reality of suffering, the causes of suffering, the possibility of freedom, and how to find freedom. So it's actually all a response to those issues. And so we come back to this very simple question, especially focusing on mental suffering. We certainly care a lot about it. And if we ask the root of mental suffering, then again, the response from all of Buddhism, all of the Buddhist tradition, and then we see it very clearly in Dzogchen, is grasping onto that which by its own nature is not I or mine, only at best in a matter of convention or attitude, mutual agreement and so forth. Report an error in the passage at 0:51 Highlight the passage at 0:51

1:31 And so where this really has, where it's very up close and personal, is the body. But just to illustrate, here's a cell phone that I'll call mine, it belongs to my institute, but if I call mine, it's good enough. And so if I should drop this and it completely shatters and breaks, and I know, oh, let's see if it's mine. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Report an error in the passage at 1:31 Highlight the passage at 1:31

1:54 Yeah, that's mine. Then I'll feel bad. Like, oh, my cell phone. Whereas if there's just an anonymous cell phone that drops off a ledge and it completely shatters, just some cell phone, then I'll say, oh, a cell phone just got shattered. Report an error in the passage at 1:54 Highlight the passage at 1:54

2:19 I suffer only because it's mine. And it's mine only because we say so. There's some kind of agreement. If somebody steals it, they only have a disagreement. Report an error in the passage at 2:19 Highlight the passage at 2:19

2:31 He thinks it's his. For a little while, I'll think it's mine. And after a while, I'll just relax. It used to be mine. And now if it breaks, it's not my problem. If my cell phone that now belongs to him breaks, then... But that's a symbol. Report an error in the passage at 2:31 Highlight the passage at 2:31

2:49 Everything we identify with, if something bad happens to it. But if I don't identify with it, it's just a cell phone. I could care less, so big deal. It breaks, it breaks, I don't want to give it. But that was just illustration. But it's everywhere that way. But now we become very personal, where we feel, okay, in this one I have a choice, I could give it away. I could give it away, in which case, just immediately. Report an error in the passage at 2:49 Highlight the passage at 2:49

3:13 Just by mutual agreement. I say, would you like it? You say, yes. Then it's yours. Then we're finished. And now it no longer belongs to me. But we get something really personal, up close and personal. We say, like your body. Your body. It seems like we didn't have any choice in that matter. Some of us have, you know, all kinds of bodies. Report an error in the passage at 3:13 Highlight the passage at 3:13

3:31 And we didn't really kind of choose. That's the body I wanted. And so it feels like I've got no choice here. This is my body. This is my feeling. This is mine. And then we look and then we start really paying attention to the mind. We feel, well, this is certainly my mind. Nobody else has this one. And so it just feels like this is inescapable, unavoidable, something thrust upon us that, well, this is optional. Report an error in the passage at 3:31 Highlight the passage at 3:31

3:56 And you can shift your nationality. You can go from being an Australian to a Bulgarian, if you like. And you just do the paperwork and then suddenly you're no longer an Australian. So that's a lot of kind of things are negotiable. But it just doesn't seem like this as long as we are embodied. It doesn't seem like this is negotiable. And how much mental suffering, let alone physical, do we experience by grasping onto the body as me and mine? Report an error in the passage at 3:56 Highlight the passage at 3:56

4:19 And yet is any part of it actually, really, in mine? We don't think of colors as being mine. We don't care if sounds as being mine. But then we go to another field, tactile sensations, and then suddenly, mine. Why? We go to another field of thoughts, images, many of them involuntarily just arising and passing like cloud formations with no sense of agency, no just, they're just happening, right? Report an error in the passage at 4:19 Highlight the passage at 4:19

4:47 Depression comes in, we didn't create it, and so forth and so on, just formations taking place. And yet we somehow think, we don't think those are my clouds, but we do think my mind is getting cloudy. My mind, my cloudiness, my dullness. And so this is a very deeply ingrained habit. We can ask, is it necessary? Because in the Pāli canon, say the root of suffering, it's the five skandhas, basically the body and mind, that are closely held. Report an error in the passage at 4:47 Highlight the passage at 4:47

5:18 The fact that this is literal translation, the closely held body and mind, closely held, now are ready to suffer, ready to suffer physically and mentally. Because they're closely held, identified with. Is that necessary? And if it were, there would only be the first and second noble truths, but there would be no more. This is your suffering, this is why you're suffering, sorry, and then you'd just be finished. Report an error in the passage at 5:18 Highlight the passage at 5:18

5:43 So the only reason the Buddha even pointed out the first two, which are kind of a downer, frankly, is because of the final two. There's a possibility of liberation and a way to become liberated. So that's what we'll be doing here, to see if we can observe. Report an error in the passage at 5:43 Highlight the passage at 5:43

5:57 The appearances, the phenomena, the phenomena arising in the somatic field. And the phenomena are of two types. Those that are simply appearing to us, like here it's warm, here it's cool, here it's tingling, here it's moist, here there's motion, here it's and so forth, appearing to us. But within this somatic field, there are also the way we experience. And I'm experiencing a little discomfort on the back of my hand. Report an error in the passage at 5:57 Highlight the passage at 5:57

6:25 Really, really minor. Boy, that's like one out of a thousand on the scale of displeasure. But yeah, I can experience it. It's the way I'm experiencing those sensations really mildly. Report an error in the passage at 6:25 Highlight the passage at 6:25

6:38 So it's that feeling, the way we experience sensations as being pleasant, unpleasant, and nurturing. They're not objectively, the feelings are not objectively arising to us, like how many fingers am I holding up. But they are in the way we're experiencing it. And the way we experience certain sensations, including a nice caress or a punch and so forth, we're experiencing it as pleasant or unpleasant. Report an error in the passage at 6:38 Highlight the passage at 6:38

7:04 Now, a caress by a stranger, a stranger comes in sick next to you on a bus and starts caressing your head. The same as if a loved one, like your child, caresses Mama, then you smile, and a dirty old man comes and you... The tactile sensations are exactly the same, right? And yet one you find... 9-1-1, you know, I don't know what that, like that. And it's the way you're experiencing it, exactly that, right? And as tactile sensations, so for all of these others, that the feeling is actually in the mode of experiencing it. Report an error in the passage at 7:04 Highlight the passage at 7:04

7:36 Some people like to have extremely agitated minds. Some people like to be totally spaced out. I think there are drugs for that, right? And some people like to be extremely calm, and some people like to be incredibly high. And if you like it, then you experience it as pleasurable. Report an error in the passage at 7:36 Highlight the passage at 7:36

7:53 And if you don't like it, you experience it as unpleasant. So what's happening in the space of the body are both the objective appearances and the subjective ways you're experiencing it, which we find to be pleasant, unpleasant, neutral, and likewise with the mind. They're just events arising. You didn't choose them. You didn't choose the thoughts, the images that pop up. You didn't choose, I'm about to desire ice cream. Report an error in the passage at 7:53 Highlight the passage at 7:53

8:15 Yes, I'm now desiring ice cream. It doesn't happen that way, right? It's just desire of all kinds. They just arise. And then we identify with him or not. So this practice we're about to do, we're going to get in really quickly now, is to focus on these two domains of experience which make us so immensely, indefinitely vulnerable to suffering. Report an error in the passage at 8:15 Highlight the passage at 8:15

8:40 Our identification with the body. My body, my sensations, my feelings. And then the mind, my thoughts, my feelings, my emotions, my memories, my, my, my. And then we're just primed to suffer. Is it possible to be totally present with, vividly, totally, like face to face, totally present with, attentive, discerning, totally present without the identification? Report an error in the passage at 8:40 Highlight the passage at 8:40

9:04 The answer is yes. Could that be the key to freedom? That suffering might arise in your body and it's not yours. But you do take, you know, if you broke your leg, then you get treatment for it. Could you have such a spacious awareness? That whatever is arising in the body and the mind you don't identify with and therefore you don't suffer. The answer is yes, it's possible. One deeper level and then we'll go to the practice. Report an error in the passage at 9:04 Highlight the passage at 9:04

9:30 But this is core. Grasping onto that which is not I and mind is being my mind that makes us vulnerable to suffering. Period. And nothing is by nature I or mine. Intrinsically by its own nature. At all. Nothing whatsoever. And so, but there's a deeper level. And this you find in the middle way view, the perfection of wisdom you find in Mahāyāna. Report an error in the passage at 9:30 Highlight the passage at 9:30

9:51 And that is this way of apprehending things which we call reification, or Buddhist terminology, grasping onto the true existence of. So this happens in a non-lucid dream all the time, that the appearances of people are grasped as people, as existing from their own side. And it happens in the waking state, that we grasp onto phenomena as existing from their own side, by their own nature. And this is said to be even a deeper root of suffering, of the reification. Report an error in the passage at 9:51 Highlight the passage at 9:51

10:21 Because nothing, in fact, here's the hypothesis, and it is testable, that nothing exists by its own nature, by its own intrinsic identity, by its own characteristic, in and of itself. Nothing does. Everything arises in mutual interdependence. And so this is a deeper root of suffering, revocation, grasping to true existence, and to view phenomena as empty and yet appearing. Report an error in the passage at 10:21 Highlight the passage at 10:21

10:51 To view phenomena as if they were dreams is an immediate key to freedom. And we know this to be the case in one domain of experience. And that's in dreams. Just take that. And it's not saying waking state is a dream. It's not. So we're not doing anything stupid here. But what is true is in a dream, if you reify the events, yourself, your presence, your body, other people in the dream, you're just ready to suffer in any way. Report an error in the passage at 10:51 Highlight the passage at 10:51

11:21 You can suffer physical pain in a dream. When you have no physical body, because your body in the dream is not made of atoms, but still somebody punches you in the face, it really hurts, right? Report an error in the passage at 11:21 Highlight the passage at 11:21

11:34 And so forth. And why are you suffering? Because you are reifying your body as being real. And then somebody stabs you or shoots you or what have you. It hurts. And then somebody terrifies you or insults you or assaults you verbally and so forth. And you can be traumatized. It's called nightmares, right? And you can be traumatized by the events in the dream, but for only one reason, because you're reifying them. Report an error in the passage at 11:34 Highlight the passage at 11:34

12:03 That's the one reason that nightmares and so forth harm you. Reification. You can have exactly the same dream, your worst imaginable dream, the worst nightmare that you would hope never ever to have. That one can occur. 100 out of 100, the worst possible dream. And there it is, the worst possible nightmare. And if you're lucid, you're just watching a bad movie. I mean, you just see whatever it is. Report an error in the passage at 12:03 Highlight the passage at 12:03

12:33 I'm not really here within the dream. This is just like a holographic image of me. And all of that consists only like of holographic images. So even if it's a horrific 3D IMAX movie, it's still a 3D IMAX movie and there's no possibility of anything in that dream harming you. And if you're very, very lucid, you know that. Report an error in the passage at 12:33 Highlight the passage at 12:33

12:53 Which means you don't even feel any need to transform it to make it turn out better. Which can be very easily done if you're very lucid. But you say, why should I bother? So I'm about to be eaten by King Kong. Or, you know, whatever. I mean, maybe it's silly, but so, so it's my worst nightmare. Whatever. Just a movie. It's just empty appearances. Report an error in the passage at 12:53 Highlight the passage at 12:53

13:13 So then, just with that one insight, without having to change the dream in any way, just see it as a dream. And you're free. Completely free. You cannot possibly be harmed. Then why can you be harmed when there's nothing there? I mean, this is like a psychotic fit, right? Seeing people that are going to harm you and so forth, throwing nuclear warheads at your head. How can you be harmed in a dream when nothing's there, right? Report an error in the passage at 13:13 Highlight the passage at 13:13

13:39 I mean, literally, there is nothing there in the dream. There's nothing there. And yet you can still be harmed by it. Only for one reason, delusion. You're grasping onto it as really being there. So this is at the very least a key to complete freedom within dreams of any type of harm, physical or mental. Now that's just a true statement. Report an error in the passage at 13:39 Highlight the passage at 13:39

14:02 That's not even very debatable. And then we can say, all right, waking state, waking state, how much like a dream. And that we investigate. We don't brainwash ourselves. We don't just recite mottos or slogans. That's not enough. That's a gimmick. It's in exploring how dreamlike is this waking state. Again I'll say, not the same, but maybe it's much more similar than we ever have. Maybe through the release of revocation, seeing the empty nature of all phenomena, including other people, they are there, they are people, they do have parents, they are there, but they do not exist by their own inherent nature, and nor do you, nor anything else. Report an error in the passage at 14:02 Highlight the passage at 14:02

14:43 Seeing that is a key to freedom. So let's step into the shallow end of the pool, find a comfortable posture, and we'll continue on this trajectory. Report an error in the passage at 14:43 Highlight the passage at 14:43