Shamatha Retreat with Alan Wallace 2012 (part 1)

0:00 To join you again and come back and address really the very foundation in terms of meditative practice. The foundation for any type of meditative practice in the whole of the Buddhist tradition. Report an error in the passage at 0:00 Highlight the passage at 0:00

0:12 So I think we can just kind of jump right in. I was checking out the little manual here that tells about the silence and all of that business. Perhaps just a little tiny bit on logistics. And again it just kind of seems a bit odd. Are these going to be used eventually or do people just not want to sit? Report an error in the passage at 0:12 Highlight the passage at 0:12

0:30 Otherwise... You know, we could be all a bit closer. So maybe we can do that during the break. But I just don't see the sound quality. Let's fix that. Let's deal with logistics first. Oh, it fell over. Oh, yeah. Okay, now quite clear. Report an error in the passage at 0:30 Highlight the passage at 0:30

0:55 So maybe during the break, we can figure out how to be a little bit more, how do you say, compact. Report an error in the passage at 0:55 Highlight the passage at 0:55

1:03 Maybe just a word or two about the format, and then we'll really focus in on the content for the rest of the week. Report an error in the passage at 1:03 Highlight the passage at 1:03

1:13 We'll be having these three-hour sessions, so obviously this afternoon we're starting with a three-hour session, two hours in the evening, and then for the main body of our retreat, then three in the morning, three in the afternoon, then two in the evening. And the way this has worked out, I think, quite well in the past is that for the two three-hour sessions, morning, afternoon, that we'll have, just quite regularly we'll have, now today's the exception, because today's introduction, kind of getting into it. Report an error in the passage at 1:13 Highlight the passage at 1:13

1:40 But from now on, we'll be having three meditation sessions for each three hours. Each meditation session will be 24 minutes. Report an error in the passage at 1:40 Highlight the passage at 1:40

1:50 So we'll start with two back-to-back sessions with a little time break to stretch the body so you feel comfortable. And then the rest of the three-hour period will be divided up into mostly Dharma talk but also time for discussion. Report an error in the passage at 1:50 Highlight the passage at 1:50

2:04 So something of a balance of meditation. And then Dharma talk, really explaining the nature of shamatha, the evolution of shamatha and so forth, and time for discussion. By the time we come to the evening session, after a nice, rather leisurely afternoon break from 5 to 7, time to walk, stretch, enjoy the fresh air. Report an error in the passage at 2:04 Highlight the passage at 2:04

2:23 Then when we come back for the evening session, and this will be every single night, the evening session will really be for just meditation and discussion, but there will be no Dharma talk. So no fresh information. There will be time for assimilation, for meditation. And for discussion, I would encourage primarily the discussion being focused on the teachings, the practice of the day or of the preceding days, rather than going off into all kinds of different avenues of inquiry. Report an error in the passage at 2:23 Highlight the passage at 2:23

2:49 But that won't be tightly regulated, so if some important question comes up that's not directly pertaining to our practice here, that can be addressed too. But overall, I'd like the focus to be here, because we're tackling or engaging in something very important. And I should mention this. And that is my aspiration for coming here for these next six days, offering my best with you, is that by the time we all leave, what is that next Monday I believe it is, Monday at noon, that all of you will leave here with a sense of confidence. Report an error in the passage at 2:49 Highlight the passage at 2:49

3:22 Confidence. And that is both in terms of the theoretical teachings about shamatha, we'll be looking at three different methods of shamatha, that your understanding will be clear. You'll be confident, yes, I know about the nature of the practice now, if I wasn't clear before, it's clear now, but not only just a conceptual or intellectual clarity and confidence that you've understood the teaching, but also this is going to be a mixture of teaching and practice and that by the time we come to the end of these six days or so, that you've ventured into the different practices enough times that you feel confident, yeah, I know how to do these practices, if you're so inspired. Report an error in the passage at 3:22 Highlight the passage at 3:22

4:01 To continue in the practices once you've gone on home and you're establishing your own daily meditative routine or schedule that you feel, yes, I know how to do these practices. Hopefully you'll be drawn to one or two or all three of them. But you will feel, yes, during those six days I got a good foundation and now I'm set. Report an error in the passage at 4:01 Highlight the passage at 4:01

4:20 I really can practice. And of course there can be always follow-up, there can be further reading, there's a bunch of books out there, other books by other teachers, lamas of the past and so forth, that really continue to unpack the nature of Samatha and its significance for the rest of Buddha Dharma as a whole. Report an error in the passage at 4:20 Highlight the passage at 4:20

4:36 But that's what I would aspire for, is that when you leave here you do so with confidence. And so with that aspiration, then if our discussions are really keep on coming back to... theory and practice of shamatha so that you do indeed have that confidence. In terms of the silence, I saw it was noted here in the introduction to the retreat. Report an error in the passage at 4:36 Highlight the passage at 4:36

5:01 I would encourage it because the overall theme here, which is a neuroscientific truth, a psychological truth and a contemplative truth, is that if you're seeking to bring about very meaningful and durable transformation in your mind, Of any kind, to quit smoking or to develop other habits, very positive habits, that the key is continuity. And so for these luscious, delicious six days that we have together, we really have only one thing to do. Report an error in the passage at 5:01 Highlight the passage at 5:01

5:32 I think really our food is being taken care of. Our rooms are pretty straightforward. I don't think there's a whole lot of upkeep that's needed. And so we really have hardly any, if any, demands on our time outside of. The content of this retreat. And so if we can turn this whole time into just an ongoing flow of practice that will be really squeezing this fruit and getting all the juice out of it, deriving as much benefit as possible, and in that spirit of seeking continuity, then silence, maintaining a kind of a default mode of silence. Report an error in the passage at 5:32 Highlight the passage at 5:32

6:08 Unless there's something really important to talk about, then just go back into your practice as if you're living up in a little mountain hop. Mountain hut high in the Himalayas someplace and you're just maintaining an ongoing flow of practice. Well here we are in this beautiful environment, lovely places to walk here on very extensive grounds for this retreat center. Report an error in the passage at 6:08 Highlight the passage at 6:08

6:28 But just that sense of containment, the term is samādhi, this composure, an ongoing composure, a continuity of mindfulness in between sessions will certainly be the way to go deeper and deeper even with six days. And be tapping into some of the sweetness, some of the benefit of these different shamatha practices. Report an error in the passage at 6:28 Highlight the passage at 6:28

6:49 And that said, if in between sessions, if some of you feel that it would just be so meaningful if you have a Dharma friend here or a spouse, a companion, and you would really like to go out on a walk away from this room, go out for a walk in this very spacious area, And have some very meaningful conversations about practice. And you feel that would be more meaningful on occasion than always maintaining silence. Then no one stands to judgment, not me or anybody else. Report an error in the passage at 6:49 Highlight the passage at 6:49

7:22 So if you find on occasion it would be more meaningful to engage in some very, very meaningful focused conversation in between sessions. And also where you're separated from other people so they don't have to participate in your conversation. They can maintain or abide in their own silence. And this is all fine. So there's no Dharma police here. Report an error in the passage at 7:22 Highlight the passage at 7:22

7:40 No one's going to be monitoring how silent are you and only the silent ones are the good practitioners. It's not true. But default mode, when there's really no need to speak, then we go back into silence. And this also is kind of an outer manifestation of a new habit to be cultivated and that is overcoming an old propensity that has been for a very long time common to humanity but especially in the modern world is very, very common. Report an error in the passage at 7:40 Highlight the passage at 7:40

8:09 And psychologists have been studying it and it's been known about for a very long time in the Buddhist world. The Buddhists call it vikarpa, psychologists call it rumination or perpetual habitual mind wandering. Report an error in the passage at 8:09 Highlight the passage at 8:09

8:22 And my phrase for it is obsessive compulsive delusional disorder. And that is just a habit, but it's not a healthy habit. It's an indication, a symptom of a mind that is not in a state of balance. Any more than if you went into your kitchen, if you went home right down to your kitchen and you found that the faucet in your kitchen sink simply could not turn off. Report an error in the passage at 8:22 Highlight the passage at 8:22

8:46 And while you're here, it's just running and running and running. I can imagine maybe even a little bit of panic would arise. Oh my goodness, what's my water bill going to be like? This is terrible. Why won't that faucet turn off? This is terrible. And I think you would be phoning a plumber very quickly. Hey, there's something seriously wrong with my plumbing. Or it happens in a toilet sometimes. Report an error in the passage at 8:46 Highlight the passage at 8:46

9:04 Remember, it runs and runs and runs and you can't get it to stop? And you think, oh, that's terrible. Call the plumber or fix this. But right now, do something. Because there's just a running on and on and on and we can't turn it off. So how about the run-on of obsessive, compulsive flow of thinking? Report an error in the passage at 9:04 Highlight the passage at 9:04

9:21 In the mind, can you turn the faucet off on your mind so that when there's nothing to think about, when it's time just to be present, to be quietly, mindfully attentive, that that silence, that clear, very present, attentive silence is not cluttered by an ongoing flow of chit-chat. Report an error in the passage at 9:21 Highlight the passage at 9:21

9:46 So do we have that freedom or not to be silent when we wish to be silent? And then of course to think. When we wish to be thinking, whether it's very strategic, very directed problem solving, there's a place for that. Whether it's sometimes daydreaming or just thinking very creatively in a free flow, there's a time for that as well. Report an error in the passage at 9:46 Highlight the passage at 9:46

10:04 So this theme of overcoming obsessive compulsive delusional disorder is not anti-thought. That's ridiculous. Thinking is very, very useful. Just as water flowing from the tap when you turn on the faucet is very useful. But when you want to turn off the tap, there's no reason to have the water running. Report an error in the passage at 10:04 Highlight the passage at 10:04

10:22 And if it's still flowing, then you know you're probably losing something here. And having a mind that just doesn't know how to shut up, that flows even when there's nothing to be thought about, that's not a symptom of a healthy mind. So shamatha has kind of at its base the ability to be quiet when you wish to be quiet, to think when you wish to think. And so that's part of developing mental discipline, developing mental health. Report an error in the passage at 10:22 Highlight the passage at 10:22

10:47 So as with the mind, then likewise, This outer display of what's going on in the mind in terms of speech, that when we wish to be silent, we can be silent. And when we wish to engage in meaningful talk, then we do so. Report an error in the passage at 10:47 Highlight the passage at 10:47

11:02 So that's basically it for logistics. And in terms of how each of these three-hour sessions will be broken down into meditation sessions and Dharma talk and discussion, we'll see. But overall, we'll be quite regular in terms of having meditation sessions. And overall, with this exception this afternoon, we'll start with a meditation session, so when your body is probably as fresh as it gets, and you've just come in. Overall, I will say this, particularly for shamatha practice, which is all about developing attention skills, Report an error in the passage at 11:02 Highlight the passage at 11:02

11:34 that if your body is experiencing discomfort, pain in the knees, the back and so forth, discomfort in the body is just a distraction. It's not helpful. So I know in some vipassanā traditions and so forth, you know, no pain, no gain, work through the pain and all of that. I'm not going to enter into that debate. I don't necessarily disagree. Report an error in the passage at 11:34 Highlight the passage at 11:34

11:55 But I will say for shamatha, such physical discomfort is just a distraction. It has no upside to it. And I do know, since I've been teaching for quite a long time, I'm getting on in years, that some people actually damage their bodies as they spend a lot of time in meditation over the years. They blow out their knees or they don't exercise. Report an error in the passage at 11:55 Highlight the passage at 11:55

12:16 They develop back problems and so forth. And that just shouldn't play any part. That shouldn't play any part in a meditative practice. So I don't know, but... Wai Chung, I think you would know. I'm not asking you any favor. But will there be any yoga or any type of instruction just to get people... How do you say? Get their bodies working? Is that happening this time? Nothing you know of. Say again? Report an error in the passage at 12:16 Highlight the passage at 12:16

12:42 If someone offers. So if someone would like, if somebody is qualified, would like to offer, and that was not a request to Yichong, it's simply a question, then we find otherwise, I do yoga very frequently, and then I just like walking. I just enjoy that, getting out in the fresh air, stretching the legs and so forth. But doing something with the body, getting it out, getting that cardiovascular system working about, it's a good idea. Report an error in the passage at 12:42 Highlight the passage at 12:42

13:08 So that's pretty much it for format. I think that will do. Good. So, as you all of course know, we're here to look into the theory and especially the practice of shamatha, the theory insofar as it supports, illuminates, clarifies the practice itself. Report an error in the passage at 13:08 Highlight the passage at 13:08

13:31 And shamatha itself, this range of practices for developing samādhi, so shamatha is a range of practices, methods, for developing what? Samādhi. Report an error in the passage at 13:31 Highlight the passage at 13:31

13:43 This is really fundamentally about developing attentional balance or developing attention skills. And that's useful for a very, very wide variety. One could say all manner of human endeavors could be benefited by developing attention skills. But my point of coming here, flying across the Pacific, spending this time with you, is my motivation was not secular. Report an error in the passage at 13:43 Highlight the passage at 13:43

14:07 It was not secular, and that is, okay, I know about developing attention skills, I have a lot of background there, I've done a lot of research, so let's help people develop attention skills. That's not my motivation. Not to say that we shouldn't do that, but for me, whenever I teach shamatha, in my own practice and so forth, my writing and translation, shamatha is embedded in a very rich framework, and one can say the largest framework, a very meaningful framework, is Dharma. Report an error in the passage at 14:07 Highlight the passage at 14:07

14:38 Spiritual practice, Dharma practice. So what I'd like to do this afternoon is kind of move in on shamatha, but move in from a broad base and go back to very basic issues that I think are always worthy to return to, to see the context, to be very vividly aware of, to embrace, be conscious of the context as we focus in on very specific practices. Report an error in the passage at 14:38 Highlight the passage at 14:38

15:05 So I'd like, and I will be introducing various Sanskrit terms over these six days. I've introduced a couple already, three, Dhamma, Samādhi, Shamatha. Others are bound to crop up on occasion. And the reason I'll use Sanskrit terms rather than translating them into English is because we don't have nice, clear, straightforward English words already that have the same meaning as these Sanskrit terms. Report an error in the passage at 15:05 Highlight the passage at 15:05

15:30 So we can either make up a term like calm abiding, It's often used as a translation for shamatha. And it's good, but it's limited. It's good, it's not bad. But just for a few terms, I'm going to stick with the Sanskrit. But then what I like to do is, when I introduce Sanskrit terms, say why, but also give you as rich as possible an understanding of what does a Sanskrit term mean. Report an error in the passage at 15:30 Highlight the passage at 15:30

15:54 Calm abiding, well we all know calm abiding. But how about shamatha? Does it mean calm abiding in Sanskrit? No, it doesn't mean calm abiding. It has a somewhat different, slightly different connotation. Calm abiding is a direct translation from Tibetan. So, but where I would like to start though, as I said with context, a broader base, is with another Sanskrit term and it's Dharma. Report an error in the passage at 15:54 Highlight the passage at 15:54

16:16 Dharma. Report an error in the passage at 16:16 Highlight the passage at 16:16

16:20 So let's start there. Why call it Dharma? Why not call it some English term? And what determines whether something is a practice, a theory, what have you? What determines whether something is Dharma or not? Report an error in the passage at 16:20 Highlight the passage at 16:20

16:37 I found something enormously useful in this regard in response to a question I asked one of my very early teachers about 40 years ago, a wonderful Galupa Lama by the name of Geshing Arntaiki, one of my principal Lamas, teachers, mentors. And after I trained with him for a couple of years and heard this term Dharma innumerable times, I just sat down with him and asked, well, what is Dharma itself? Report an error in the passage at 16:37 Highlight the passage at 16:37

17:00 What does the word mean? What does it mean to practice Dharma? And his response, and this is where I'm going to start this afternoon, Whereas Dharma is a way of viewing reality, a way of practicing, that leads to an enduring state of well-being. Report an error in the passage at 17:00 Highlight the passage at 17:00

17:24 Now one can imagine an enduring state of well-being. How heavily shall we load this term enduring? How long does it need to endure to be enduring? So one might imagine a person, I'll give a silly example, but a person who takes refuge in alcohol and just never gets sober. Report an error in the passage at 17:24 Highlight the passage at 17:24

17:45 Drunk all the time. Starts the morning getting high and then stays high and then just probably drinks himself to death. One can say, well, he's in enduring fashion, has the cheerfulness or whatever of being drunk. So is that practicing Dharma? So I said I'd start with a silly example. The mere fact that something is enduring, maybe you're a cocaine addict and you're always into cocaine, or maybe you're very wealthy and you can just surround yourself. Report an error in the passage at 17:45 Highlight the passage at 17:45

18:15 By one type of pleasurable stimminess after another. You live in a mansion, you have your favorite music booming from every room and sensual pleasures here. Just like an Indian prince, like Gautama himself, Prince Gautama. When he was young living in the palace, he probably had a pretty continuous stream of pleasant things. Report an error in the passage at 18:15 Highlight the passage at 18:15

18:34 He had his harem, he had his wonderful food. Recreation, he had excellent clothing and so forth and so on and so on. So that's one way of getting something kind of enduring, is just continue to bombard yourself with pleasant stimuli. But that's clearly not what Geshingo and Taghi was referring to. So to understand Dharma, I think it's very useful to draw a distinction I have now drawn many times, including last night, but I'll reiterate it today briefly, to draw a kind of a line in the sand. Report an error in the passage at 18:34 Highlight the passage at 18:34

19:07 A clear distinction between two types of well-being, both of which have their value. So it is not the case one is bad, one is good. They both have their value, but they are different. And Dharma is all about one, and it's really not explicitly about the other. So, two types of happiness or well-being. Report an error in the passage at 19:07 Highlight the passage at 19:07

19:27 The first called hedonic, hedonic, which is not meant to be a pejorative term. And the other one, we could use the Greek term eudaimonic. But I'll simply say genuine happiness. But let's look at hedonic, or one could call this in Buddhist terminology, mundane happiness. Nothing to be sneered at. Nothing derogative. And by mundane, let's just stick with that, mundane happiness. Mundane happiness, and there are many references to this in the Buddhist teachings itself, mundane happiness, pleasure, well-being, is any type of happiness that arises independence upon a pleasant stimulus. Report an error in the passage at 19:27 Highlight the passage at 19:27

20:08 Seeing A beautiful landscape. I just came back from, just flew over the Tasmanian Sea, is it? From New Zealand. Is that the sea between? I think it is. Yes, correct? Tasman Sea, thank you. Tasman Sea. But as I think you probably all know, it's a lovely country over there. It's a lovely country here too. But everywhere I go in New Zealand, it's always beautiful. Everywhere is beautiful. And so just landing there, landing at the airport, seeing this around, it brings some pleasure just seeing such natural beauty, right? Report an error in the passage at 20:08 Highlight the passage at 20:08

20:37 And so I enjoy that. I enjoy visiting there as I enjoy visiting Sydney. It's really the San Francisco of the Southern Hemisphere as far as I'm concerned. And I like San Francisco a lot. And so whether it's seeing beautiful cities, beautiful landscape, lovely music, excellent food, but it's not just sensual. Again, it's not something crude or base, enjoying the beauties of nature. Report an error in the passage at 20:37 Highlight the passage at 20:37

20:57 It's nothing crude. But it's also aesthetic pleasures, enjoying fine art, music, sculpture and so forth, poetry, fine literature. This is all hedonic. The pleasures of friendship, the pleasures of friendship, also hedonic. And that is, your friend comes into your presence, you engage with your friend, and that's a nice stimulus. Report an error in the passage at 20:57 Highlight the passage at 20:57

21:19 It's a good friendship, you enjoy being with the other person. And then a happy marriage, a meaningful, warm, loving, mutually respectful marriage, that gives rise to a lot of hedonic happiness. It can arise also in our relationship with our children. They give us pleasure. They're adorable. I have a grandson. I know what it's like spending time with my grandson. He gives me a lot of joy because he's a very sweet boy. And so we see there's nothing trivial about this. Report an error in the passage at 21:19 Highlight the passage at 21:19

21:44 I mean, there's something, sometimes it's not very deep, just enjoying ice cream is a hedonic pleasure. But the joys of friendship, of a happy marriage and so forth, that's not trivial at all. And then, so we see that hedonic pleasure can be come by our social interactions, engagement with the environment, with the five sense fields. Report an error in the passage at 21:44 Highlight the passage at 21:44

22:01 The intellect, the people who love working on crossword puzzles or working in mathematics, theoretical physics and so forth. It's also a type of intellectual stimulation that gives a lot of people some satisfaction. I've worked in mathematics and physics and to go in there and make some discoveries and proofs, whatever, it does give some satisfaction and it is hedonic. Report an error in the passage at 22:01 Highlight the passage at 22:01

22:21 And so it can come by way of the senses but it can also come through mental activity. We stimulate, we arouse ourselves. By thinking about philosophy, and that stimulates the mind. Thinking about art, thinking about history, thinking about science, mathematics and so forth. It's all stimulus driven. It can be good. It can be meaningful. And then there's coming in the back door. There's the back door. And that is people who seek happiness through chemical stimulation. Report an error in the passage at 22:21 Highlight the passage at 22:21

22:50 So you don't really see it coming this way. You take, you smoke a cigarette, you take alcohol, cocaine. Or some of the pharmaceutical drugs and so forth and then you get some pleasure from that. It's acting directly on your brain. It's stimulating your brain with some kind of a pleasant stimulus. It happens to be chemical. That too is a hedonic happiness. That is, there's some stimulation coming in and pleasure arises independent upon that chemical stimulation. Report an error in the passage at 22:50 Highlight the passage at 22:50

23:16 So it's sensory, it's intellectual, it's aesthetic, it's interpersonal, it's chemical. It covers a broad swath from very meaningful Like the joys of friendship to profoundly unmeaningful, like the high of taking heroin. I've never tried it. I'm sure it's very pleasant. I have no interest in trying it. But of course it's killing you as you're getting the pleasure. So there's a broad spectrum there. There's also Schadenfreude, the delight in other people's misfortune. Report an error in the passage at 23:16 Highlight the passage at 23:16

23:46 That's also a stimulation. You see your enemy just got, you know, met with some adversity, lost reputation and so forth. That's also a stimulation. But now we say, hey, that's not just trivial, this is really, this is unwholesome, this is not beneficial at all, but still some pleasure arises. So there's that whole bandwidth, the very, very broad bandwidth of pleasure that is stimulus-driven. Report an error in the passage at 23:46 Highlight the passage at 23:46

24:11 And for many people, the pursuit of the good life, the pursuit of happiness, is actually equivalent to, because they've never heard of anything else, is equivalent to that. In the popular media, In secular television, entertainment and so forth and so on, it's back to family values, the joys of romance, the joys of being successful in business and so forth and so on. Report an error in the passage at 24:11 Highlight the passage at 24:11

24:33 It's really pretty much all about the hedonic. But the wisdom traditions of the world, and I'm referring to Socrates and Aristotle, of Zhuangzi, of Shankara, of the Buddha, of Jesus, of St. Augustine and so forth, really it's very broad wisdom traditions, East and West, ancient and modern. Many of the greatest sages of humanity have recognized that there's another whole dimension, another whole bandwidth of happiness, of well-being, of flourishing. Report an error in the passage at 24:33 Highlight the passage at 24:33

25:05 The Greeks called it eudaimonia, human flourishing. And if we just quote Aristotle very briefly, Aristotle said, what is this eudaimonia? It is living, it is a being at work of the soul in accordance with virtue and should there be more than one virtue in accordance with the highest virtue. So now he's not talking about stimulation coming in. He's not talking about a type of well-being that comes from what you get from the world, but rather a being at work of the soul. Report an error in the passage at 25:05 Highlight the passage at 25:05

25:35 It's coming about through a cultivation of your own way of life, of your mind, a cultivation of insight, of discovery, of wisdom and so forth. Philosophia, the love of wisdom, would be leading to eudaimonia, genuine happiness or human flourishing. Well, the same thing comes up in Buddhism. A quality of well-being that stems not from what you're getting from the world but from what you're bringing to it. And so there is a fundamental difference there. Report an error in the passage at 25:35 Highlight the passage at 25:35

26:06 Certainly hedonic well-being is very important and without it it's very hard to pursue eudaimonic or genuine happiness. Such things as the joy, the pleasure, the satisfaction of having enough to eat. Nobody can trivialize that. Having shelter. Having clothing and having medical care when you need it, whether you're injured or ill. These are not trivial. So that's hedonic. Report an error in the passage at 26:06 Highlight the passage at 26:06

26:33 So that has its place. It's very important. But as human beings, we have also the potential to strive for, to aspire to something beyond, more and more and more of the hedonic. More wealth, more sensual pleasures, more power, more fame, more and more and more of mundane happiness. We can do that. We can limit ourselves in that way. But we have the capacity to aspire for something that is truly by nature noble and meaningful, and that is genuine happiness or human flourishing. Report an error in the passage at 26:33 Highlight the passage at 26:33

27:04 So such well-being arises from what we bring to the world rather than what we get from it. It comes from cultivating a way of life, cultivating our minds, cultivating insight, wisdom, understanding. So it's a different type of strategy. The Buddhist view, which is that of also St. Augustine, which is also that of Socrates, is that the whole point of the pursuit of mundane well-being is so that we can meet all of our material needs, take care of them, so we have no anxiety about that for ourselves, our families, those who are dependent upon us. Report an error in the passage at 27:04 Highlight the passage at 27:04

27:40 So on that basis of having met all of our mundane needs, our material needs, then we can turn our attention and say, good, now that that's taken care of, now I can focus single-pointedly. I'm leading the most meaningful life I can to finding genuine happiness. So Dharma is all about, Dharma one can say is defined as a way of viewing reality, a way of living, a way of practicing that leads to genuine happiness. Report an error in the passage at 27:40 Highlight the passage at 27:40

28:15 And it's not antithetical to the pursuit of hedonic well-being, but you can be tremendously successful in terms of finding hedonic pleasure, hedonic success. Without learning any Dharma at all. Many of the wealthiest people in the world have no interest in, have never given a moment to the cultivation of genuine happiness or human flourishing. Report an error in the passage at 28:15 Highlight the passage at 28:15

28:36 But they may have billions. And they may enjoy their billions or they may not. That's an open question. And then some of the poorest people I know. I've known over the last 40 years that I've engaged with Dharma. 40, 42 years now. Some of the poorest, financially, poorest people I know. Report an error in the passage at 28:36 Highlight the passage at 28:36

28:57 Oh, one Tibetan yogi I knew. I don't know if I know, I've known ever anybody who's poorer than he was. No electricity, no plumbing, lived as a yogi up in a little Neanderthal hut up in the mountains above Dharamsala, India. Really poor. He's also one of the happiest people I've ever met in my life. And lived one of the most meaningful lives that I know of anyone. Because for year after year, decade after decade, he was single-pointedly immersed in the practice of Dharma. Report an error in the passage at 28:57 Highlight the passage at 28:57

29:26 And it was just like it got into his DNA, into his bone marrow. There was just no part of him that was just not saturated by Dharma. So tremendously meaningful life, joyful life, warm and compassionate life, but suffused also with wisdom. So, no direct correlation. The fact that you're wealthy doesn't mean that you don't have genuine happiness. You may, you may not. It depends on whether you cultivate it. Report an error in the passage at 29:26 Highlight the passage at 29:26

29:49 And whether you're poor, no criterion, no guarantee that you don't have genuine happiness. They're rather independent variables. But overall, for most of us, to have met our basic needs is a really good foundation. So then we can focus single-pointedly on Dharma. So that's Dharma in short. Now having said that, so now we have a term, Dharma. What is Dharma? Report an error in the passage at 29:49 Highlight the passage at 29:49

30:13 It's a way of viewing reality. It's a set of values. It's a way of life, practice, oriented towards the cultivation of the realization of ever-deepening, genuine happiness. That since we're not acquiring it from the world, nobody can actually take it from us. That which you haven't taken can't be taken away. It's something you're bringing to reality, something you're cultivating, so it's from the inside, which means nobody can get their pincers in and separate you from it. Report an error in the passage at 30:13 Highlight the passage at 30:13

30:40 Having said that, is Dharma equivalent to religion? Or is it equivalent to Buddhism for that matter? The answer is emphatically no, and I'm speaking now as a traditional Buddhist. No, Dharma, the Buddhist tradition does not have a monopoly on Dharma. It's not the only tradition that teaches Dharma. How about religion? Shall we say that Dharma is religion? Report an error in the passage at 30:40 Highlight the passage at 30:40

30:59 Some people actually use that, translate Dharma as religion. I have to say, well, I don't really agree. Because that would imply anybody who's not religious, who's not adhering to a particular religious tradition, therefore is not practicing Dharma. But that's not true. That's clearly not true. Exactly what religion was Socrates? Report an error in the passage at 30:59 Highlight the passage at 30:59

31:18 I think he'd be kind of hard-pressed. What was it? If you read his conversations, his dialogues and so forth, here's a man that was deeply involved in Dharma. Aristotle also. He had a lot of very wise insights to share about eudaimonia, genuine happiness. So is there Socratic Dharma? I would say emphatically yes. Aristotelian Dharma, yes there is. Yes there is. So Dharma crops up in philosophy. Report an error in the passage at 31:18 Highlight the passage at 31:18

31:48 Because above all, Socrates and Aristotle were philosophers. They're not known as scientists, they're not known as religious people, or founders of a religion. No, they were some of our quintessential Western philosophers. But they definitely emphasized, taught and practiced genuine happiness, what we call Dharma. Report an error in the passage at 31:48 Highlight the passage at 31:48

32:08 So we find Dharma in philosophy. Over the last ten years in particular, since around the turn of the millennium, a school of philosophy, Still kind of in its birthing phase, to my mind, still in embryonic or infancy, has arisen, and that's called positive psychology. Positive psychology. We've had some of the major proponents of positive psychology speaking right here, thanks to Tony, Mindness Potential conferences, Happiness and His Causes conferences, with people like Martin Seligman, and I'm sure you must have had others as well. Report an error in the passage at 32:08 Highlight the passage at 32:08

32:43 Jonathan Haidt is a strong figure there, and a number of other, very fine. Very, very astute, distinguished psychologists are venturing into this whole realm of psychology, which is not simply cognitive or affective psychology, not simply trying to understand the mind, not simply clinical psychology in terms of trying to address mental problems, diseases, imbalances and so forth, but a whole school of psychology that is oriented to, well, what does it mean to be happy? Report an error in the passage at 32:43 Highlight the passage at 32:43

33:11 What is mental health? What is positive mental health? Once you're normal, once you are free of, Any of the diseases that are set forth and explained in the DSM, the Encyclopedia of Mental Diseases, if you cannot be diagnosed as having any of them, so now you say, okay, you're healthy, now what? Have you now hit the pinnacle of human existence? Is that as good as it gets? Do you say, I'm not diseased? Or could you work from that kind of, if it were a Cartesian graph, now that you've gotten up to zero, you know, now that you're no longer in the negative territory, Is there any positive territory or you just be happy to be not sick? And people like Martin Seligman said, well, maybe we start thinking positively. Report an error in the passage at 33:11 Highlight the passage at 33:11

33:55 And so now how do we conceive exceptional mental health, exceptional mental well-being, exceptional mental balance? And so, of course, these people are pretty smart, a lot of them. And so they looked some of them back to Greek antiquity and say, oh, we're not the first people to think about this. Aristotle and so forth, they also address this issue. Report an error in the passage at 33:55 Highlight the passage at 33:55

34:16 And so the term eudaimonia, which literally means good spirit, this has been now adopted by some psychologists who will speak of eudaimonic well-being. And they are exactly talking about this. Martin Seligman calls it authentic happiness. And others call it human flourishing and so forth. So we find that Dharma, the actual cultivation of the inner cultivation of a sense of flourishing, of well-being, of genuine happiness, is now making its way into science. Report an error in the passage at 34:16 Highlight the passage at 34:16

34:45 Into the science of psychology. So philosophy doesn't have a monopoly on it. The scientists are now saying, hey, well, we want to play too. We want to also scientifically study the causes, the symptoms, behavioral manifestations and so forth of genuine happiness. They're into it too. So we see now they have to share. The psychologists or scientists and they're even neuroscientists like Richard Davidson looking into, okay, what are the neural correlates of genuine happiness? Report an error in the passage at 34:45 Highlight the passage at 34:45

35:14 Are they different than the neural correlates of hedonic pleasure? I don't think they found them yet, but they are interested. And so we find neuroscientists, we find psychologists, we find scientists interested in, getting some vested interest in, oh, well, let us understand this. And I just had an email exchange with Richard Davidson a couple of days ago, asking whether he developed any apps, you know, now I don't know what apps are, right? Report an error in the passage at 35:14 Highlight the passage at 35:14

35:38 Apps for developing and measuring the experience of compassion. Might there be compassion apps? And in fact, he just got a grant. I think this is public information. Why not? From the Gates Foundation. You know, good old Bill Gates. The Gates Foundation just gave him some money for his lab to develop some apps for compassion for children in school, for middle school children, like 12, 13 year olds. Report an error in the passage at 35:38 Highlight the passage at 35:38

36:05 So, this is a scientist. He's not a philosopher. He's not a religious person. He's a very good scientist. But the scientists are getting into, oh, could compassion and the cultivation of compassion, could that have anything to do with genuine happiness? Well, the answer is you betcha. And so scientists are involved here. So we see now, okay, well, this is not a sectarian issue. This is not even an issue that one discipline can say, okay, we own it. Report an error in the passage at 36:05 Highlight the passage at 36:05

36:29 We philosophers, everybody keep out. This is philosophy. Well, no, not so fast. The neuroscientists, the psychologists who say, well, we want to play too, so this is the playground we're going to share here. But then, of course, has religion over the last few millennia, has religion had, or great religious teachers, have they had anything to say about genuine happiness? Report an error in the passage at 36:29 Highlight the passage at 36:29

36:52 Well, the answer is all of them did. The Sufis in the Muslim tradition, and I'm sure not just the Sufis, the contemplative aspects of Judaism, but also others, non-contemplative, Buddhism as a whole. It's so much about genuine happiness. And the Hindu tradition, the Vedanta tradition, the yoga tradition, the Taoist tradition, and so forth, say, oh, wow, the religious people have been at this for a long time, East and West, and so we can't leave them out. Report an error in the passage at 36:52 Highlight the passage at 36:52

37:19 So we find that in this theme of Dharma, we have something that actually unifies. As you probably know, there's a fair amount of rancor between science and religion on occasion, especially as it's articulated by extremists, kind of fanatics, religious fanatics. Oh, they want to ward off science. They're saying, oh no, anti-science. And then we get really fanatic, kind of fundamentalist materialists who are waving the banner of science and they're down on religion. Report an error in the passage at 37:19 Highlight the passage at 37:19

37:44 So we get a lot of that, kind of tiresome to my mind. So if that's what they want to do, be divisive and be attacking the other side, that's all very well. But here is something that doesn't lend itself to that. Genuine happiness doesn't belong to science. But they're invited to the party. It doesn't belong to philosophy, but they've been part of the party for a long time. And it's been part of all the religious traditions of the world. Report an error in the passage at 37:44 Highlight the passage at 37:44

38:09 So as I have listened to my own Lamas over the last 42 years, they will, this is very traditional Lamas, very traditional Lamas, they will speak of Christian Dharma and Hindu Dharma and so forth, acknowledging, we Buddhists, we have our Buddha Dharma. But there's also Christian Dharma, which is to say, in the Christian tradition, they too have ways of viewing reality, of practices, prayers, rituals and so forth, that lead to the cultivation of genuine happiness. Report an error in the passage at 38:09 Highlight the passage at 38:09

38:39 And the Christians actually use the term eudaimonia. They adopted it from the Greeks. So, I like to start here. If I start leading a series of meditative retreats, I like to start with shamatha. Because it's not divisive. It's not coming in and saying, okay everybody, I'm a galupa. So we don't do the Sakya and the Kagyu and the Nyingma business because those are other traditions. And by the way, within Galupa, I'm from Sera. So we don't do the Ganden and the Dipum approach. Report an error in the passage at 38:39 Highlight the passage at 38:39

39:05 We don't do that. Oh, by the way, within Sera, I'm Sera Che, not Sera Me. And so we don't do the Sera Me. We do the Sera Che. There's everybody straight. You are now followers of Sera Che, of Sera, of the Galupa tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. And now we've knocked out everybody else. And by the way, I'm your teacher. Report an error in the passage at 39:05 Highlight the passage at 39:05

39:23 Okay, now we really narrow the dharma, so let's start really divisive. That's the way exactly I don't want to go. Let's find where the common ground is. Without being mushy, but where is the common ground? Well, dharma is a really good place to start. Really good place to start. It doesn't even enter into the science versus religion debate, because it's on the science side and it's on the religion side. Report an error in the passage at 39:23 Highlight the passage at 39:23

39:44 So which side are you going to knock down? Right? So I think it's a very good place to start. And within the many types of dharma, including secular dharma, There's one person whose work I've critiqued fairly extensively a long time ago in one of my books, Edward O. Wilson. He's an outstanding sociobiologist. Report an error in the passage at 39:44 Highlight the passage at 39:44

40:01 He's written very brilliantly about evolutionary biology. He's a very, very committed materialist. I don't know him personally, but I've heard personally that he's a very nice person, very ethical person. And I did note when I critiqued one of his books called Consilience that he expressed a very strong sense of environmental concern and environmental responsibility for the natural environment. Report an error in the passage at 40:01 Highlight the passage at 40:01

40:23 Very ethical, very conscientious, looking to future generations. How can we preserve this natural world so that it's there we've taken care of? We've been custodians of the natural world for future generations. Now, he's an atheist. He's a materialist. Science is the only way. He's rather disparaging of all religions. Okay, I don't agree with him on those points. But does he have a type of environmental Dharma that he's teaching? Report an error in the passage at 40:23 Highlight the passage at 40:23

40:48 Yes. And I'm with him on that point. I'll critique other parts. That's part of dialogue. We'll disagree and we'll debate and so forth in civilized fashion. But when I see virtue, I want to applaud it. And he does definitely. As a human being, he's a very virtuous man, very ethical man. And there's no question, he's very clearly advocating, since as his Holiness the Dalai Lama speaks of universal responsibility, Edward O. Report an error in the passage at 40:48 Highlight the passage at 40:48

41:14 Wilson is advocating an environmental responsibility for all human beings. Let us nurture this environment. Not exploit it, tap it dry and leave future generations with the short end of the stick, as we say in America, with a raw deal. So the simple point there is that there is secular Dharma. There is humanistic Dharma. There's even atheistic Dharma. He's an atheist. But that's not the point here. You don't have to believe in God in order to practice Dharma. Report an error in the passage at 41:14 Highlight the passage at 41:14

41:42 So we start there. Within Dharma, then there is Buddha Dharma. There's the Dharma that the Buddha taught. And so the context for shamatha for this retreat will be that context. Having said that, to devote oneself to the practice of shamatha, which of course is our central theme, do you need to be a Buddhist? Report an error in the passage at 41:42 Highlight the passage at 41:42

42:03 The answer is no. You don't need to be a Buddhist to practice shamatha. It doesn't require any particular belief, not in reincarnation, karma, Buddha nature, liberation, Four Noble Truths. It really doesn't require that. Those beliefs, if they're really part of your worldview, may be very helpful, very supportive for your practice. Report an error in the passage at 42:03 Highlight the passage at 42:03

42:20 But is it a prerequisite that we first have to make some leaps of faith or adopt some ideological articles of faith? The answer is no. Is shamatha, if we hone in on this, is shamatha, is this set of practices, this development of attention, is this unique to Buddhism? Report an error in the passage at 42:20 Highlight the passage at 42:20

42:41 The answer again, once again, is no, it's not unique. It's not unique. So let's now start converging in. The very term samādhi. It means unification, a coalescence, a composure, a gathering, a unification of the mind. That's what the term Samādhi means. Really a coming together, a unification of the mind. Report an error in the passage at 42:41 Highlight the passage at 42:41

43:01 So we've laid out a broad panorama that Dharma is not just anything. It's not making a lot of money on the stock market. That's not Dharma. Nothing wrong with it, but that's not Dharma, right? Report an error in the passage at 43:01 Highlight the passage at 43:01

43:12 So Dharma is very broad, but it's not all-encompassing. But it does cross the borders of science, religion. Secular and religious and so forth. And I would say spiritual practice is Dharma practice. That's how I'm going to define spiritual practice. Not that you believe in spirits necessarily, but when I use the word spiritual practice, that's what I mean. Report an error in the passage at 43:12 Highlight the passage at 43:12

43:33 It's oriented to the cultivation of genuine happiness and not just going for optimal performance so you can make more money, win friends and get people to like you and so forth and so on. It's about genuine happiness. But now within Dharma and within Buddhadharma, Report an error in the passage at 43:33 Highlight the passage at 43:33

43:51 Then we can say, okay, what's the entry point? What's the entry point? When do you know when you're starting to practice Dharma? And there is a foundation. And now I'm speaking within the parameters of Buddhadharma. I won't try to speak for all other traditions, let alone the secular ones, but not even for other religious or contemplative traditions. Report an error in the passage at 43:51 Highlight the passage at 43:51

44:10 But in the Buddhadharma there is a foundation, and if you don't have this foundation, you don't have any Buddhadharma. So this is kind of like a big deal. And that is the foundation for Dharma practice within Buddhism. Report an error in the passage at 44:10 Highlight the passage at 44:10

44:24 Is ethics. It's the way you lead your life. The way you behave with body, speech and mind. And it's very simple. And it doesn't, once again, to practice Buddhist ethics doesn't mean that you necessarily have to believe in reincarnation karma, etc., etc. You don't have to actually believe in anything. His Holiness the Dalai Lama has written a whole book about ethics for the new millennium, which has said, look, let us give some real meaning to the understanding and practice of ethics that's not contingent. Report an error in the passage at 44:24 Highlight the passage at 44:24

44:53 Upon any particular ideological framework, belief system and so forth because a lot of humanity after all is not religious but we all need to behave towards each other and the environment ethically. So His Holiness the Dalai Lama himself is quite intent on conceiving, sharing a notion of secular ethics. He comes back to this many times. Report an error in the passage at 44:53 Highlight the passage at 44:53

45:16 Well Buddhist ethics is not secular but the very heart of it transcends the confines of Buddhism per se. Because the very core of Buddhist ethics is non-violence, it's ahimsa. That's non-violence with the mind, that we're not harboring malevolent, injurious, violent thoughts to inflict harm on others, not on people, not on the environment. Report an error in the passage at 45:16 Highlight the passage at 45:16

45:40 That our speech, that we do our very best, is an ongoing practice. That when we see a certain impulse to arise of sarcasm, of contempt, of disgust, of manipulation, of deceit and so forth, When we see that an impulse to speak arises and it actually may inflict harm, that we exercise restraint. That's ethics. And likewise, of course, with the body. Whether it's the impetus, the incentive to act out in the world in ways that are all around one's own greed, one's own self-gratification, or whether it's acting out of malevolence, hatred, and so forth. Report an error in the passage at 45:40 Highlight the passage at 45:40

46:27 Avoiding to the best of our ability, violence, living a harmless life as much as possible, foundation. If we're not willing to go there, if that doesn't become a priority, if we don't embrace that wholeheartedly, then we say, okay, then I think you really don't want bodhicitta, you probably should look for something else. Report an error in the passage at 46:27 Highlight the passage at 46:27

46:46 Because that's the core, that's the foundation. We don't need to believe in karma for that. I do believe in karma. I'm just pointing out that belief is not necessary here. We all know what violence is. Report an error in the passage at 46:46 Highlight the passage at 46:46

46:58 Buddhist ethics is not just about restraint. It is very much about restraint. That when we see these old habits coming up, self-centered, aggressive, greedy, selfish and so forth, that could manifest in harmful behavior of body, speech or mind, that we do exercise restraint. That's absolutely central. But Buddhist ethics is more than restraint. It's also something positive. And that is when we see the opportunity to be of service. Report an error in the passage at 46:58 Highlight the passage at 46:58

47:25 To alleviate somebody else's pain, their suffering. To lend a helping hand, to help someone find the happiness they seek. That the complement to non-violence is benevolence. Report an error in the passage at 47:25 Highlight the passage at 47:25

47:39 Benevolence. And that is that we look with kindness on the sentient beings around us. For that matter, look with kindness on the sentient being that we are. Report an error in the passage at 47:39 Highlight the passage at 47:39

47:49 And as the Dalai Lama says, wonderful, it's now become a bumper sticker I've seen all over the world, my religion is kindness. My religion. Kindness is my religion. Well, he actually means it. That is the foundation. And so if one goes just that far, says, I really like Buddha Dharma, but I don't know about all that theory. Report an error in the passage at 47:49 Highlight the passage at 47:49

48:08 I'm not really sure whether it's true or false. And I don't really have time to meditate. I've got ten kids and a full-time job. And I've got three wives. You know, that would really keep you busy. That would be really, really busy. That's all I'm saying. Not that I'm advocating polygamy. But there are people who just feel they're so busy. They just don't have time for meditation. Report an error in the passage at 48:08 Highlight the passage at 48:08

48:28 I understand. I understand. Mothers with newborn babies. I've never been one, at least not recently, but I think that's pretty much a full-time job. I've seen my stepdaughter, and I was there in the hospital when she gave birth. Man, that's a full-time job. And for the first two years, not much sleep. That's what I saw. Report an error in the passage at 48:28 Highlight the passage at 48:28

48:48 Not a whole lot of sleep. So if a mother of a newborn baby is not spending much time formally on the meditation cushion, say, give her a break here. Ease off. Chill. Her full-time Dharma practice now is taking care of this little sentient being who is 100 % dependent on her. And hopefully there's a dad someplace around too who can fill in. And so whether or not one ever meditates or seeks understanding of emptiness or the wisdom teachings of Buddhism, if one is just saying, okay, here, there's something I really relate to. Report an error in the passage at 48:48 Highlight the passage at 48:48

49:22 And that is, I take to heart, I embrace wholeheartedly. Themes of non-violence, benevolence. I'd like to orient my whole life around those themes. And I may never get to meditation, may never get to insight meditation and all of the wisdom teachings, but that part I really am drawn to. I'm committed to it. Are you a Dharma practitioner? The answer is yes. That's enough actually. If that's all you do for a life, is you really do your best to avoid violence, abide by the principle of non-violence and benevolence. Report an error in the passage at 49:22 Highlight the passage at 49:22

49:55 That's good. That's a good life. Not one moment of meditation, no retreats, still a good life. That's a Dharma life. That is practicing Dharma. Report an error in the passage at 49:55 Highlight the passage at 49:55

50:05 And there is a joy, there is a satisfaction, a sense of well-being, yudamuniya, that arises from leading such a way of life, of being a good mother, a loving parent, a loving spouse, a good neighbor, a good member of society, contributing, offering one's best to society around oneself, being a responsible custodian for our natural environment. Report an error in the passage at 50:05 Highlight the passage at 50:05

50:27 Could there be some satisfaction, sense of well-being and meaning in leading such a life with no religion, no meditation, none of the above, just that? And the answer is yes. There is Yodamuniya there. So that's enough. That's enough. So once again we have common ground. Common ground with the religious and the non-religious. Report an error in the passage at 50:27 Highlight the passage at 50:27

50:46 Because I'm not a lot of non-religious with people who say, okay, Wallace, so far so good, I'm with you. I don't know when I'm going to jump off, but so far I'm with you this far. Okay? A lot of people would. And some people would say, no, not me. They've already jumped off. And now we're starting to hone in. We've got this broad basis of Dharma. Report an error in the passage at 50:46 Highlight the passage at 50:46

51:06 Within Dharma, then we say, okay, what's the foundation? It's ethics. That's ethics. But now, is there anything more to Dharma than leading a non-injurious and benevolent way of life? That's a really good foundation. It's a golden foundation. But is there anything more? That is, when we speak of ethics, my sense of it, especially as a Westerner, is that ethics is very much relational. Report an error in the passage at 51:06 Highlight the passage at 51:06

51:29 And it has a lot to do with behavior. My ethics in relationship to other human beings, to animals, to the natural environment, and how I'm conducting myself, how I'm engaging, engaging. So it's very much interactive. That's my sense of ethics. It's interactive. It has to do with behavior, including behavior of the mind. It's interactive, right? But can I practice Dharma when I'm sitting by myself in my room all alone? Report an error in the passage at 51:29 Highlight the passage at 51:29

51:53 Whether it's for 20 minutes in the morning in my meditation room or the bedroom or what have you. Or whether it's going off to a six month retreat, which I'm anticipating doing in December. Solitary six months, just disappearing. Is it possible to practice Dharma? Well of course you know my answer to that. And it's the Buddhist answer as well. That there are ways of practicing Dharma that are not so explicitly, emphasize the word, not so explicitly relational, that are not contingent upon active engagement. Report an error in the passage at 51:53 Highlight the passage at 51:53

52:22 Intercourse, social intercourse, verbal intercourse and so forth with the world around you, but more internally cultivated within your own being, your own heart, your own mind, your own consciousness. Tapping in, discovering, venturing into research and what do they call R &D? Research and development. Research and development into your own internal resources. Report an error in the passage at 52:22 Highlight the passage at 52:22

52:48 Not just the well-being we can derive as social creatures, which we indeed are. We are social creatures. But that doesn't define us. That's not all there is to us. We're not just social creatures. I've spent too much time with yogis who spent 20, 30, 40 years in solitude. They're not very social, but they are certainly human, gloriously, magnificently human. And so what about that? Report an error in the passage at 52:48 Highlight the passage at 52:48

53:14 What about the response to, who was it, Pascal? Pascal, 18th century, wasn't it? The problem with modern man is our inability to sit quietly in our chambers. Report an error in the passage at 53:14 Highlight the passage at 53:14

53:28 And he's speaking, I believe it was 18th century. Great mathematician and philosopher, very devout Christian as well. But back then in the hurly-burly of the 18th century, well how about the 21st century? Might that be a problem nowadays? That we're so oriented to producing and accomplishing and getting things done and active, active, active, active, that it's so easy to just be swept up into the tide of modernity, carried away by one doing after another after another. Report an error in the passage at 53:28 Highlight the passage at 53:28

53:58 All about social engagement, all about productivity, all about getting something done. That we never pause. Just pause. Ah, here I am. And what's that mean? What does it mean to have a mind? What does it mean to be embodied? What does it mean to have consciousness? To pause and to go inwards rather than always, always, always focusing on the outer resources. Report an error in the passage at 53:58 Highlight the passage at 53:58

54:24 Which is such a big deal in modern economics, politics. Sociology, environmental studies, tapping the outer resources, fossil fuels, solar energy, wind energy, wave energy, lumber, minerals, where we get more, more, more, more, satisfying our insatiable appetite for hedonic well-being in a planet that is clearly finite and a population that's obviously growing, but with a very enormous appetite. Report an error in the passage at 54:24 Highlight the passage at 54:24

54:55 So here's the alternative. That is, it's not so much an alternative but something complementary because I too, I was driven here from Darling Harbour to here in a car that was burning fossil fuels. It was a long walk. I'm very glad we were able to drive. So here we are. We're making use of the external. But now we complement that by tapping into our own internal resources. Report an error in the passage at 54:55 Highlight the passage at 54:55

55:16 And the one term here, I'm going to use now another Sanskrit term. I won't return to it often but I will use it right now. And that is as we move into this whole other phase or dimension of genuine happiness. As I mentioned before, it's a matter of cultivation. Of cultivation. Not hunting and gathering, finding things out in the world that we can pluck, garner, bring home and then enjoy. As in pursuit of hedonic pleasure. Report an error in the passage at 55:16 Highlight the passage at 55:16

55:47 But the cultivation. The genuine happiness as we move on the basis of ethics and go to greater depth to explore our own internal resources. Can you be content? Can you live a meaningful and fulfilling life, at least on occasion, when you're in solitude and not explicitly engaging with anyone? Or are you a blank slate? Are you a little patch of Sahara with nothing growing? Is all of your happiness coming always independent upon engagement with other people? Report an error in the passage at 55:47 Highlight the passage at 55:47

56:21 And so forth. If so, Report an error in the passage at 56:21 Highlight the passage at 56:21

56:25 there's trouble ahead. Because you're going to die alone. And when you're dying, it's a solo. It's a solo voyage. So if you've always been banking on your happiness being interdependent, explicit dependence upon others, now you're going to be let down. Because actually, even if you die, two people and the automobile crash together, you're still solo. You're still solo. And so to tap into the solo part. Report an error in the passage at 56:25 Highlight the passage at 56:25

56:55 Well, there's a Sanskrit term. It's a perfect term. And its term is bhavana. You'll see it in your notes, bhavana. Translated as meditation, but the literal meaning of the Sanskrit term is cultivation. Report an error in the passage at 56:55 Highlight the passage at 56:55

57:12 Cultivation. So it's very easy in this modern world to think that meditation is for unusual people, spiritual people, people who like the occult or are drawn to mysticism or Eastern thought or what have you, or the rare Christian contemplative here and there who's drawn to meditation. But it's, you know, Like some rare hobby, something for unusual people, but not normal. Report an error in the passage at 57:12 Highlight the passage at 57:12

57:42 So it's easy to think of meditation as something rather bizarre, out of the ordinary. And I'd like to broaden, if we go back to this term bhavana, it means cultivation. Well, one could say, now broadly speaking, all of education from preschool right up to post-doctoral work in neuroscience or astronomy, all of education is bhavana. Report an error in the passage at 57:42 Highlight the passage at 57:42

58:03 All of education. It's all about cultivating Skills, cultivating knowledge, cultivating insight, abilities, whether it's trade school, cultivating the ability for carpentry or for computer design, information technology and so forth. It's all about cultivating the mind and the skills and potentials of the mind, memory skills, imagination, problem solving and so forth and so on. All of education is Bhavana, really in the broadest sense of the term. Report an error in the passage at 58:03 Highlight the passage at 58:03

58:34 Not just about acquiring data. Developing skills of the mind. We're not little data banks. That doesn't define us as human beings. So we think broadly that education is really bhavana. It is cultivation of the mind. And now think more broadly that bhavana in the context of Dharma is cultivating the mind explicitly so that we can tap into our own internal resources for genuine happiness. Report an error in the passage at 58:34 Highlight the passage at 58:34

58:58 And that's tapping into what we in English call the mind. Attention skills, mindfulness and intelligence and so forth, but it's also tapping into what we call the heart, and that is cultivating loving kindness, compassion, empathy, benevolence, altruism. And of course these two terms, heart and mind, they're the same term in Sanskrit, it's jitta. It's one, it's one continuum. So shamatha fits now, it fits into Dharma, it's based upon ethics, and then on that basis it fits into the category of bhavana. Report an error in the passage at 58:58 Highlight the passage at 58:58

59:29 Shamatha is within bhavana, cultivation. Cultivation of the heart and mind. And then more specifically, since there's a wide variety, a very wide variety of different types of bhavana, many types of meditation, Christian, Sufi, Taoist, Hindu and so forth. Now we start to narrow in within the context of bhavana as we're tapping into our own internal resources, probing deeper and deeper, asking the question, what are our internal resources? Report an error in the passage at 59:29 Highlight the passage at 59:29

1:00:03 Is it possible to find well-being? It's not dependent upon any stimulation at all. Not even dependent upon acting in a benevolent way. That is without acting at all, sitting quietly on a cushion or even in a supine position. Is it possible to tap into a wellspring of well-being that's not even contingent on acting, on behavior, of social intercourse and so forth? Report an error in the passage at 1:00:03 Highlight the passage at 1:00:03

1:00:28 And the answer unequivocally is yes, it is. And this is what Bhavana is for. Among the wide range of meditative practices, Buddhism itself has hundreds of different types of meditation. Then we have that genre of meditations, meditative practices, that are aimed at the cultivation of samādhi. Report an error in the passage at 1:00:28 Highlight the passage at 1:00:28

1:00:50 And samādhi at this point is an English term, you'll probably find it in a number of English dictionaries, English-English dictionaries. And it will be translated as probably concentration, focused attention, maybe it will have a more esoteric connotation. But in Buddhism it does, as I mentioned before, samādhi comes from the Sanskrit verbal root samatha, which means to place. Report an error in the passage at 1:00:50 Highlight the passage at 1:00:50

1:01:12 In simple terms it means simply the complete unification, the coming together, the gathering, the composure of heart and mind. That whatever you're attending to, whether it's another person, an activity, an environment, a situation, a dream, a problem, Like in mathematics or developing a business plan, what have you. Whatever you're attending to, it could be your child who's just come home from school, your spouse who's just come back from work. Report an error in the passage at 1:01:12 Highlight the passage at 1:01:12

1:01:41 You give your spouse your samādhi. You have samādhi on your spouse. And so forth. Samādhi on your work. Samādhi in heavy traffic. Where people come and go changing lanes. Okay, now I'm practicing samādhi and being a responsible driver. It means you're fully present. You're fully engaged. You're wholly there. Whether it's in a conversation. Report an error in the passage at 1:01:41 Highlight the passage at 1:01:41

1:02:00 Driving, meditation, prayer, art, music, skydiving. I imagine that's probably some rather externally induced samādhi. I never jumped out of it on a plane, but I imagine if I did, I'd be very concentrated. It catches your attention. And so samādhi is that, it's unification, it's composure, a wholeness, a fullness, a gatheredness of attention. Report an error in the passage at 1:02:00 Highlight the passage at 1:02:00

1:02:27 So there's samādhi. And now the last Sanskrit term for the time being is shamatha. And shamatha consists of, this term refers to, a wide variety, actually dozens of different methods for achieving samādhi. Methods for achieving samādhi, that's what it's for. And shamatha, the word itself, the Sanskrit term itself, just means peace, serenity, tranquility, quiescence. Report an error in the passage at 1:02:27 Highlight the passage at 1:02:27

1:02:54 It's a noun. It means just that. Any of the serenity, tranquility, quiescence, peace. That's what it means, shamatha. The Tibetan is translated as shine, which can then literally be translated calm abiding or calm presence. But now when we say, okay, but that's the etymology, that's just what the word means, but now, okay, what does it really mean? Report an error in the passage at 1:02:54 Highlight the passage at 1:02:54

1:03:18 That's just the etymology. Often the definition of a term is not the same as its etymology, right? Just how the word breaks down syllable by syllable. And so when we speak of tranquility or calm, what has been calmed? What has been calmed? Is it just turbulence? In which case, if that were the case, every time we fall deep asleep into stage four non-REM sleep, you say, I achieved shamatha, it was really peaceful last night, snoring, knocked out, immediately zonkered, totally peaceful. Report an error in the passage at 1:03:18 Highlight the passage at 1:03:18

1:03:47 But did you achieve shamatha? No. The turbulence of the mind when you're in deep sleep, that's calm for sure. But that's not shamatha. That's only one half the equation. What is calmed when you're abiding calmly? In the practice, the cultivation and experience of shamatha, is you've calmed two attentional imbalances. The first of these is one we're very, very familiar with. Report an error in the passage at 1:03:47 Highlight the passage at 1:03:47

1:04:15 And that is the turbulence, the agitation, the distraction, the excitation of the mind. Or, modern psychological term, attention hyperactivity. It's calmed. The obsessive flow of thinking, calmed. The compulsive. Tendency to be sucked up into and carried away by whatever rumination, thought, memory, image it comes up. Sucked up and carried away compulsively. Report an error in the passage at 1:04:15 Highlight the passage at 1:04:15

1:04:46 It's calmed. The delusive tendency to assume that whatever we're thinking must be true. Not only true, but the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That delusional tendency to think that it must be true because I'm thinking it. Which is clearly delusional. That's calmed. Report an error in the passage at 1:04:46 Highlight the passage at 1:04:46

1:05:06 So on the one hand, yes, the turbulence, the OCDD. The obsessive, compulsive, delusional tendencies of the mind. They're calmed, yes. But they're also calmed in deep sleep. So that's not enough. There's more to meditation or shamatha meditation than falling asleep. One half the equation. The other half is the laxity, the dullness, the drowsiness, the lack of clarity, the spaced out quality of attention. Report an error in the passage at 1:05:06 Highlight the passage at 1:05:06

1:05:36 That's calmed. So we have attention. Hyperactivity is calmed and attention deficit is calmed. In other words, that which we naturally succumb to, slip into unconsciously when we fall deep asleep in non-lucid, deep dreamless sleep. We slip into her and we're totally absorbed in dullness, lack of clarity. When you're deep asleep, you don't even know you're deep asleep. In other words, you don't know anything at all. Report an error in the passage at 1:05:36 Highlight the passage at 1:05:36

1:06:04 If you don't even know you're deep asleep, then you don't know anything because that's the only thing that's happening. You're deep asleep. And you don't know that, you don't know how long you've been deep asleep. I mean, check it out. When you're really deep asleep, stage four, non-REM sleep, were you there for five minutes or five hours? Report an error in the passage at 1:06:04 Highlight the passage at 1:06:04

1:06:20 Or might you have been reincarnated as Rumpelstiltskin and spent a hundred years? I mean, who knows? Because you don't know anything. You don't know about the passage of time. Right? And so, really, the veils of darkness, of unknowing, have obscured your awareness. So that's not shamatha. Well, shamatha means that that tendency of obscuration, of dullness, of not knowing, that too has been calmed, dispelled, eliminated. Report an error in the passage at 1:06:20 Highlight the passage at 1:06:20

1:06:47 So what's achieved through the practice of shamatha is instead of the excitation, the turbulence, the agitation, the distraction, the OCDD, instead of that you have stability, Report an error in the passage at 1:06:47 Highlight the passage at 1:06:47

1:07:01 stillness, composure, continuity, what William James, a great American psychologist, called sustained. Voluntary attention. You have that stability, that composure that's cultivated and that supplants the habitual tendency of excitation, turbulence and all. Report an error in the passage at 1:07:01 Highlight the passage at 1:07:01

1:07:22 That's one half the equation. And then instead of dullness, getting spaced out, dull, just falling into a state of blank unknowing, you supplant that with clarity, vividness, acuity, high resolution, brightness of attention, wide awake. Report an error in the passage at 1:07:22 Highlight the passage at 1:07:22

1:07:41 It's a combination of those two, stability and vividness. That defines shamatha. In the cultivation of stability, you've calmed hyperactivity of attention. In the cultivation of clarity, you've calmed the tendency of dullness. You've overcome it, you've subdued it. So you've now achieved attentional balance that is both stable and clear. Report an error in the passage at 1:07:41 Highlight the passage at 1:07:41

1:08:10 And that's what explicitly is taught in many, many manuals of shamatha. This is what shamatha is all about. And the short, the one-liner here, is the practice of shamatha is designed to make your mind serviceable. Report an error in the passage at 1:08:10 Highlight the passage at 1:08:10

1:08:24 And there's an implication there, and I think it's really obviously true, and that is if, or insofar as, let's not just say if, but insofar as, your attention is prone or habituated to the turbulence, the obsessive rumination. Oscillating with dullness and laxity and becoming spaced out, and then back to turbulence, agitation, distraction, and then getting tuckered out and being dull and lax and so forth. Report an error in the passage at 1:08:24 Highlight the passage at 1:08:24

1:08:55 That's called, in Buddhism, that's called a dysfunctional mind. It doesn't work. Whether you want to have a conversation with another person, you can't stay focused. You can't maintain a coherent flow of conversation. Your mind keeps on wandering off. Or, what? What? You've just lost it. You can't even hold a conversation. Report an error in the passage at 1:08:55 Highlight the passage at 1:08:55

1:09:13 Let alone get an education or raise a child or go to work or drive responsibly. You can't do anything. Your mind's dysfunctional. So insofar as the mind is prone to these oscillations between attention deficit and hyperactivity, that's not a functional mind. In terms of meditation, it doesn't matter whether you're Buddhist or Hindu or Taoist, you're not doing any meditation well. And so shamatha is designed to make your mind serviceable. Report an error in the passage at 1:09:13 Highlight the passage at 1:09:13

1:09:37 So it's stable and clear. And that goes... Whether you're doing Krishna meditation or Taoist or Hindu, or whether you're working on theoretical physics, trying to find a grand unified theory or what have you, you really need, and it's not just for intellectual things, if you want to be a professional golfer or tennis player and so forth, stability and clarity of attention is crucial. Report an error in the passage at 1:09:37 Highlight the passage at 1:09:37

1:09:58 To be able to stay focused with clarity. This whole genre of developing attention skills is just not a strength of Western civilization. It's not a strength. It's there. But rather hidden, if you really do some research in Christian contemplative history, you find it is there. They recognized the problem, they applied methods to it, they developed their own Christian shamatha methods. Report an error in the passage at 1:09:58 Highlight the passage at 1:09:58

1:10:23 In the book I saw it out there, Mind and the Balance, I unpack a number of the wonderful methods devised in the Christian tradition that are really shamatha practices within that context. So they recognized it, and the Taoists recognized it, the Hindus recognized it. But overall, the cultivation of samādhi, By means of such practices as shamatha, it's one of the great strengths of India. More so than China, more so than the Mayans or the Greeks or the Romans. Each has its own distinct qualities. Report an error in the passage at 1:10:23 Highlight the passage at 1:10:23

1:10:52 But samādhi is one of the great gifts to humanity. Primarily of the Indic culture. They then spread to China, Southeast Asia, Tibet, Mongolia and so forth. So that's what shamatha is for. Explicitly about developing stability and vividness of attention. But before we'll take a break and we will very shortly now. Report an error in the passage at 1:10:52 Highlight the passage at 1:10:52

1:11:14 There's something underlying the stability and clarity, which is taught, but since most of the Buddhist tradition was maintained, preserved, taught, transmitted, practiced in non-European or Eurocentric, Australia is Eurocentric, like the United States is Eurocentric, we're Eurocentric, so we carry that in common. Report an error in the passage at 1:11:14 Highlight the passage at 1:11:14

1:11:39 Most of the history of Buddhism was not engaged with Eurocentric civilizations. Engage with Asian civilizations, right? More rural, more traditional, pastoral, farming, agricultural, nomadic, but not living in big cities and, you know, this whole pace of life of modernity that we've had, well, kind of for 400 years or so in the West. Report an error in the passage at 1:11:39 Highlight the passage at 1:11:39

1:12:01 And so, given, for example, traditional Tibetan culture, which I know a fair amount about, having lived with Tibetans for many, many years, until recently, the overall pace of life in traditional Tibet was so much slower, much more grounded. More leisurely. No wristwatches, no clocks. It's not a clock culture. Our Western culture has been clock-centered for quite a few centuries by now. Report an error in the passage at 1:12:01 Highlight the passage at 1:12:01

1:12:25 Quite a few centuries. Well, they just never got around to it because they didn't care. They didn't care. Who needs a clock? You've got the sun. You've got the moon. Report an error in the passage at 1:12:25 Highlight the passage at 1:12:25

1:12:35 So, in a very slow-paced traditional culture like that of Tibet, which was so Dharma-saturated with 6,000 monasteries for 6 million people, There was a point or a theme in the practice of shamatha that was mentioned to varying degrees in different traditions, but not accentuated particularly. Report an error in the passage at 1:12:35 Highlight the passage at 1:12:35

1:13:00 And that was relaxation, a sense of ease, a sense of looseness, comfort. I mentioned it, but not a big deal. And that is, if you've spent your last 20 years growing up as a nomad, you don't need relaxation therapy or a farmer or living as a monk. Report an error in the passage at 1:13:00 Highlight the passage at 1:13:00

1:13:26 What part of relaxation don't I already understand? If you're living that in traditional culture. So when they got to meditation, they might mention it once in a while, but often it wouldn't be highlighted much. Report an error in the passage at 1:13:26 Highlight the passage at 1:13:26

1:13:38 Having just practiced Dharma, watched Dharma, taught Dharma, listened to Dharma for more than 40 years, it really strikes me that for those of us living in modernity, it's that Eurocentric civilization, which is now in Beijing. And Ulaanbaatar and Singapore and Sydney and Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro and so forth. It's all Eurocentric at this point. Europe is really dominated. Report an error in the passage at 1:13:38 Highlight the passage at 1:13:38

1:14:01 Our values and so forth. Modernity. It's all over the world. It's not global. It's not global. It's everywhere. It really strikes me that we now have it habitually. All of us who are adults, like everybody in the room, we've all conditioned our nervous systems in a way that was just unheard of. I mean, we human beings have been around for about 100,000, 200,000 years. Report an error in the passage at 1:14:01 Highlight the passage at 1:14:01

1:14:24 Homo sapiens sapiens. The way we've conditioned our nervous systems with modernity over the last 150 years, mid-19th century, industrialization, pace of life and all of that. This is some very bizarre, exotic experiment being run on the human species and we're the subjects. We're the rats in the lab. What will happen to human beings if you give them this pace of life? Report an error in the passage at 1:14:24 Highlight the passage at 1:14:24

1:14:48 The new iPhones coming out every year, cars and music and entertainment and the video games. It's like, if it were intentional, it would be kind of like a mean-spirited, weird experiment. What will happen if we crank it up and crank it faster? What will happen? Oh, they're really scurrying around fast, aren't they? Oh, how wonderful they kill themselves. I don't think there's anybody doing it to us. It's a self-inflicted experiment. But the impact on our nervous systems, our minds, is pretty intense. Report an error in the passage at 1:14:48 Highlight the passage at 1:14:48

1:15:22 It's very recent and it's very Eurocentric. And so I've been teaching shamatha for 36 years now. And it really strikes me as a Westerner, but one who has lived for many, many years in Asia, as well as many years in Europe, that if we are to really be able to tap into, to flourish, to explore the depths of shamatha practice, we have some real remedial work to do. Report an error in the passage at 1:15:22 Highlight the passage at 1:15:22

1:15:47 Because we did not spend the first 20, 30 years of our lives as nomads, as farmers living out in rural Tibet, where the fastest you would ever travel would be on horseback. Report an error in the passage at 1:15:47 Highlight the passage at 1:15:47

1:15:59 Some remedial work. Because I've seen certain practices over the years that have clearly worked very well for Tibetans. And I've known many Tibetans who were raised in Tibet, in pre-Chinese dominated Tibet, communist dominated Tibet. The whole way of life is so different. The whole nervous system, Parana system, to use old terminology, is so different. That they could engage in this practice and derive deep benefit. Report an error in the passage at 1:15:59 Highlight the passage at 1:15:59

1:16:26 And then I've seen Westerners engage in the same practices and just go cuckoo. Really get wound up, stressed out. Actually come out worse than they came in. I've seen it. Same practices. Good practices. But the system we're bringing to the practices is so different that it's not to say that we're such damaged goods that we can't practice some of these very, very demanding practices. Report an error in the passage at 1:16:26 Highlight the passage at 1:16:26

1:16:51 You find in Tibetan Buddhism very esoteric practices. It is to say, though, that I am now convinced that not for everybody, avoid big generalizations, but for many people, we need to kind of retune the whole nervous system. Soothe it, calm it, gentle it. Report an error in the passage at 1:16:51 Highlight the passage at 1:16:51

1:17:11 If you know the book and the movie that Robert Redford directed called The Horse Whisperer, it's a lovely book, nice movie. And more recently, it's actually worth checking out, you'll probably find it on one of your cable channels or satellite. There's a new movie called Buck. It's by a real-life cowboy who did exactly that. He devoted his life to this way of training horses that was just so empathetic, so gentle, so in tune with the horse. Report an error in the passage at 1:17:11 Highlight the passage at 1:17:11

1:17:35 He never broke the horse. It's really quite exquisite. I really enjoyed watching the movie because it was all Dharma. It was a man who so loved horses, empathized with horses and their owners, that he was always training both in such a loving way, sensitive way, empathetic way. It's also almost magical. But the way he could take a very troubled horse, a traumatized horse, a jittery horse, and then just soothe it and calm it. Report an error in the passage at 1:17:35 Highlight the passage at 1:17:35

1:18:03 Never breaking it, never getting on it. He hides and dig in his spurs and break the spirit of the horse. Not even remote, not on his horizon, but a way of gentling. So our minds, our nervous systems, strike me rather frequently as being like a really jittery cult. A bit freaked out, a bit traumatized. Report an error in the passage at 1:18:03 Highlight the passage at 1:18:03

1:18:25 By the sensory bombardment, the demands of time, the world economy, the environmental problems, the news, almost all of it bad, and terrorism this, and economic collapse that, and global warming this, and losing the job that, and one anxiety piled on top of another, walking around like a bundle of nerves. Report an error in the passage at 1:18:25 Highlight the passage at 1:18:25

1:18:42 One friend of mine, we were monks together 40 years ago, 38 years ago, who then... He trained with me as a monk and then he went on and studied Tibetan medicine and then he got a degree in psychology. Now he's a research psychologist at UCLA. But he knows Tibetan medicine very well. And he was at a conference years ago. We were both at a conference in Washington, D.C. on Tibetan medicine. And he made the comment, you know, you Westerners, you're speaking specifically to Americans, but I think it's moderners in general. Report an error in the passage at 1:18:42 Highlight the passage at 1:18:42

1:19:09 He said, you know, you all have nervous disorders. Lung disorders, they're called in Tibetan. Lung disorders. It's nervous disorders. You all have nervous disorders. But considering how ill you are, you're coping remarkably well. Report an error in the passage at 1:19:09 Highlight the passage at 1:19:09

1:19:26 And so, as we approach, we're about to take a break, but as we approach the practice of shamatha, the first method that I'll emphasize is the method that the Buddha taught, the historical Buddha, as his teachings are recorded in the Pāli Canon. Report an error in the passage at 1:19:26 Highlight the passage at 1:19:26

1:19:44 It was the method he taught more than any other meditation at all. It's mindfulness of breathing. Mindfulness breathing highly emphasized in the Theravāda Buddhist tradition. That's why I learned it primarily. Emphasized in the Chan and the Zen traditions of East Asia. It's taught, frequently practiced in Tibetan Buddhism. Report an error in the passage at 1:19:44 Highlight the passage at 1:19:44

1:19:59 It's taught in the Sutras. It's taught in the Tantras. It's Hinayana Mahāyāna Vajrayana. It's all over the place and that's because it's really, really helpful. And in terms of soothing, gentling, calming, nurturing your nervous system, getting the whole system to calm down, to ease up. Report an error in the passage at 1:19:59 Highlight the passage at 1:19:59

1:20:19 Mindfulness breathing. It's not exciting, it's not scintillating, it's not arousing, but it's very healing. So we'll start there. That's where we'll start. Report an error in the passage at 1:20:19 Highlight the passage at 1:20:19

1:20:31 I think that's enough for now. We'll start there. We'll move into practices, settling the mind in its natural state, classic practice from Mahamudra, you'll see it taught in the Galupa tradition, the Sakya, Gagyut Nima, all traditions of Tibetan Buddhism practice it. Awareness of awareness, shamatha without a sign, Tsongkhapa taught it. Report an error in the passage at 1:20:31 Highlight the passage at 1:20:31

1:20:48 Taught in all schools of Tibetan Buddhism. It's taught very strongly emphasized in Dzogchen, in the Nyingma tradition, Gagyu tradition. So these are the three themes. I've been trained in all of these by marvelous teachers from the Theravāda tradition, Golupa, Gagyu, Nyingma, even the Sakyu tradition as well. Report an error in the passage at 1:20:48 Highlight the passage at 1:20:48

1:21:06 And so many rivers are flowing together in this teaching, the notes that we have here. That's how we'll spend these six days to make the mind serviceable, to calm and soothe the whole nervous system. And to establish a basis in shamatha, that as we develop this sense of relaxation, the stability of attention, the clarity of attention, as we do so, then we're laying a foundation, a fertile, moist, warm foundation, for all of the meditation. Report an error in the passage at 1:21:06 Highlight the passage at 1:21:06

1:21:39 I know that this wonderful Lama Chudanarmachi has been teaching here for some days now, I believe. Six yogas in aeropa. Chakra Sambhara. Report an error in the passage at 1:21:39 Highlight the passage at 1:21:39

1:21:50 Deep. Deep, deep practice. The teachings go on, I understand you. So there are many extraordinary teachings, practices, empowerments in Tibetan Buddhism. The depths of Chan and Zen, the Vipassanā tradition and Vipassanā practice in Theravāda. But all of these practices, whether it's Vajrayana, whether it's Dzogchen or Mahamudra, whether it's Chan, Shikantaza and so forth and so on. Report an error in the passage at 1:21:50 Highlight the passage at 1:21:50

1:22:15 In the East Asian Vipassanā and the Theravāda tradition. And all of these, if the mind that you bring to the practice is not serviceable, Report an error in the passage at 1:22:15 Highlight the passage at 1:22:15

1:22:25 If the mind you bring to it is tight, it's stressed out, it's tapped, Report an error in the passage at 1:22:25 Highlight the passage at 1:22:25

1:22:33 how's that going to be useful? If the mind you bring to the practice is agitated, distracted, uncollected, how's that going to be useful? If the mind you bring to the practice is not clear, dozing off, dull, lax, spaced out, what does it matter? You're bringing a dysfunctional mind to practices that may be sublime, but the Tibetans have an aphorism, there are many profound practices but few protect. Report an error in the passage at 1:22:33 Highlight the passage at 1:22:33

1:23:02 Few profound practitioners. The profound practices are there. Chirjana Machi, marvelous yogi and scholar, contemplative teacher, sharing very profound practices. How many of the students coming to have received these sublime teachings and empowerment he's sharing? How many of them will turn into profound practitioners? Maybe a lot of them, I don't know. Report an error in the passage at 1:23:02 Highlight the passage at 1:23:02

1:23:26 Not for me to say. But I will say, if they've not developed... Relaxation, stability and vividness of attention, they'll not become great practitioners. They'll not become profound practitioners. Not a sectarian issue. It's just that if you're not bringing relaxation, stability and vividness, you are bringing an uptight, scattered and dull mind, which is not useful for anything. Report an error in the passage at 1:23:26 Highlight the passage at 1:23:26

1:23:47 So I do regard from the depths of my heart, shamatha is a servant to all other kinds of meditation. Whether it's Vajrayana, Mahāyāna, Theravāda, whether it's Buddhist or not Buddhist. It's a servant to all of the others. It's in competition with none. And moreover, it's utterly non-sectarian. So I tell you that some of the teachings that we'll share here are from Theravāda tradition, but they're not in competition. Report an error in the passage at 1:23:47 Highlight the passage at 1:23:47

1:24:10 It's not sectarian. Mahamudra is not sectarian. The Mahamudra approach to shamatha, Dzogchen approach to shamatha, absolutely not sectarian. Anybody can practice it. So we're venturing into, I love this as an entry to Dharma, for meditative practice in Dharma, that it's utterly non-divisive. I've taught in Vedanta Center, I've taught in Zen, I've taught in traditions of all four schools of Tibetan Buddhism. I've also taught in a Christian context. Report an error in the passage at 1:24:10 Highlight the passage at 1:24:10

1:24:35 And that doesn't mean I'm Christian and Taoist and all of this kind of thing. It's just that shamatha goes everywhere. And I've also taught it at Caltech and MIT and Oxford. Because it goes everywhere. It's like a credit card. It goes anywhere. It's good everywhere. It's good for whatever you do. So that's where we're starting out. Common ground, something absolutely non-divisive. Report an error in the passage at 1:24:35 Highlight the passage at 1:24:35

1:24:56 Without it, you can't practice any meditation well. With it, every practice will go better. So that's what we're here for. So have a good week. Have a good week. And now I see it's at 3.30. We're here until 5. So let's come back at 3.45. And we'll go directly to meditation. That's enough. That'll probably be, in all likelihood, that'll be the longest Dharma talk I give for the whole week. Report an error in the passage at 1:24:56 Highlight the passage at 1:24:56

1:25:18 I do this standardly. Big long one at the beginning. Set the big picture. That'll be the last time we have a 90-minute talk. Everything else will be shorter and we will be then seasoning each session with meditation and that's how we will begin as soon as we come back from the break. So 3.45, see you here, we'll go right to the cushion. Report an error in the passage at 1:25:18 Highlight the passage at 1:25:18