Shamatha Retreat with Alan Wallace 2012 (part 8)

0:10 So let's return to have one session, one 24-minute session. And as now I think becomes increasingly obvious, what we're doing here is about 95 % not doing. And it's the 95 % that we're not doing that is really having the major impact, just like keeping the wound clean. It's just an awful lot of not-invection. Report an error in the passage at 0:10 Highlight the passage at 0:10

0:31 But the actual doing of putting on a disvection and a band-aid is really, really simple and takes very little time. And so if we can... Focus on this of not doing everything that would contaminate the mind, continue to throw it out of balance by focusing on something so simple and neutral as the inflow of the breath, the outflow and relaxing with each out breath, then we're allowing the body-mind to heal of its own accord. Report an error in the passage at 0:31 Highlight the passage at 0:31

0:55 So let's continue, this time in silence, on the same method. Report an error in the passage at 0:55 Highlight the passage at 0:55

· · · silence, 1 minute

1:31 Before we wait for lunch, are there any questions or comments? So far, directly pertaining to this practice and the theory behind it. Or is it all crystal clear? Report an error in the passage at 1:31 Highlight the passage at 1:31

1:55 Hi, my name is Utopia. What's your name? Utopia. Utopia. That's easy to remember. Okay, thank you. I've always been taught to sit in an upright position because of the wind channels with meditating. So how does that work with the supine position? It's very good. Report an error in the passage at 1:55 Highlight the passage at 1:55

2:12 The upright position, I mean if one really gets technical, with the seven points of Arochana, you know, the whole nine yards as we see in America, that's crucially important for certain type of practices, such as Dumo, very, very important for that. For a number of other Vajrayana practices, it's very, very critical. In Dzogchen, very specific practices, actually not that one, but three other postures are used for more advanced Dzogchen practice. Report an error in the passage at 2:12 Highlight the passage at 2:12

2:37 So, there's no question that it's very useful. On the one hand, it's kind of indisputable and that's why all the tankas we see are depicted in that posture. Report an error in the passage at 2:37 Highlight the passage at 2:37

2:52 And then we bring that posture into somebody's actual body. And if you're sitting in that posture and you're finding that your back really hurts, your knees really hurt, your hips are really starting to hurt. year. Report an error in the passage at 2:52 Highlight the passage at 2:52

3:05 And you say, well, but this is the right practice and I'm going to just persist and I'm going to try harder and harder. Well, in fact, there are yoga practices that can help to really open up the various, the joints and so forth so you can sit more and more comfortably. And so that's, in a way, that's why yoga was developed, the asanas, to really help us be able to sit in these postures in comfort for a sustained period. But meanwhile, it's also very likely that if you're practicing more than 20 minutes or an hour a day, That if you're sitting there, you just start feeling really, really uncomfortable. And then one can say, well, alright, that was the right posture, I guess I just have to stop meditating. Report an error in the passage at 3:05 Highlight the passage at 3:05

3:44 Because I have to meditate in that posture. Which means you may have a very limited meditative practice. Really, really limited. Or you may just feel, okay, I don't want to be, I'm not a wimp. I've got machismo. I'll just really bear down and I'll just, I'll bear the pain. And then you can find that you're ruining your needs. Report an error in the passage at 3:44 Highlight the passage at 3:44

4:05 That you're really creating serious back problems that will need chiropractic care or osteopathic care thereafter. I know one person meditated a lot, he can no longer jog because he's blown out his knees. And so forth, and then some people, so then one says, where's the happy ending here? Exactly, should that really be part of it? You have to ruin your body. Either you wimp out and you only practice for a little bit each day because it starts to get so uncomfortable, or you just kind of grind through it and then you're really damaging your body. Report an error in the passage at 4:05 Highlight the passage at 4:05

4:34 So is there some happy medium here? Well, the happy medium goes back to just going back to the teachings of the Buddha himself, right back in the Pāli Canon, the most foundational teachings we have for all schools of Tibetan Buddhism. Report an error in the passage at 4:34 Highlight the passage at 4:34

4:47 And we see this very explicitly, and you'll see this in the notes, but very explicitly in the Buddha's great discourse on the four applications of mindfulness, which begins with mindfulness of breathing. And then in that discourse he says, now you bring this mindfulness into introspection, you apply this in four postures. When you're sitting, when you're lying down, when you're standing up and when you're walking. Report an error in the passage at 4:47 Highlight the passage at 4:47

5:09 And you practice Vipassanā in all four of those modes. So he's teaching this. We'll see in later commentaries, and by two of the greatest masters in the whole Theravata tradition, they're saying, and I won't go into it right now, we'll get to it, but you can peek ahead. That people with one type of temperament, they may be doing better if they spend more time in the supine position. Other people may be doing better if they're sitting position or standing or walking. Report an error in the passage at 5:09 Highlight the passage at 5:09

5:35 Now for shamatha, the idea in shamatha, unlike Vipassanā, is that as you go deeper, deeper into shamatha practice, your senses actually do start to implode. You're not getting groggy, you're not getting spaced out, you're not slipping into a trance, but your physical senses are really starting to withdraw purely into mental awareness, and that's what should be happening. Report an error in the passage at 5:35 Highlight the passage at 5:35

5:57 But if you're walking, that's not going to happen because you keep on having to look out for things you might bump into. Or if you're standing and you really need to maintain your balance and not fall over, that too is really going to draw your awareness out to the sensory and your sense of balance. Report an error in the passage at 5:57 Highlight the passage at 5:57

6:15 So those two may be very good for Vipassanā, but they're not very good for Shamatha because they make you multitask. You're following your meditative object, but then you have to be looking outwards as well. Report an error in the passage at 6:15 Highlight the passage at 6:15

6:28 So the two remaining are supine and sitting. Now, what is really crucial for shamatha, and there are more things that are crucial for tumult practice, for various vajrayana practices, including the hand mantra and so forth. Excuse me, I got something in my throat. What is crucial for shamatha is that your spine is straight. That's kind of true for all. Report an error in the passage at 6:28 Highlight the passage at 6:28

6:53 You just don't want to be crooked if you can help it. You may have a scoliosis, in which case you just have to deal with that. But you want your spine to be straight. And it's very important also that there's just no concavity, there's no structural inhibition of the breathing. That is by posture. I guess it would be actually functional. And that is you're not caved over, you're not like that. That would inhibit the free in and outflow of the breathing. Report an error in the passage at 6:53 Highlight the passage at 6:53

7:21 Whether you're practicing mindfulness of breathing or any other kind of shamatha, the breathing must be really unimpeded and allowed to grow effortlessly. That's why we subtle body, speech and mind at the beginning. Of any practice, right? So if your posture though is allowing the chest cavity, the diaphragm, the belly to expand easily with no inhibition on it, if the spine is straight, that actually is enough. Report an error in the passage at 7:21 Highlight the passage at 7:21

7:45 That's enough. In which case then the supine position is perfectly good. Not for other types of practices perhaps, but for this one it is. And we see this point is made in some of the greatest classic commentaries in the Theravāda tradition. For the last 20 years, plus a couple, 22 years, a lot of my training, actually most of my training has been in Dzogchen, the Mahamudra and Dzogchen traditions. Report an error in the passage at 7:45 Highlight the passage at 7:45

8:08 And there, my own teacher, who is my principal teacher for Dzogchen, Giacudamuche, very senior Lama, well into his 80s now, happily still alive, he specifically told me, Alan, definitely make use of the supine position. It's really useful. And we see this in the text as well. In one classic text it says, just relax your body like a corpse in a charnel ground. Report an error in the passage at 8:08 Highlight the passage at 8:08

8:28 And allow the pranas to flow into the central channel. And so this is very much discovery approach rather than dumo practice, stage of completion practice, which is very developmental. You're really getting in there and with breathing exercises and visualization exercises, maybe physical exercises, you're getting in there and you are more like a shepherd. Report an error in the passage at 8:28 Highlight the passage at 8:28

8:49 You're really corralling your pranas and getting them all to line up and come into the central channel. It's a very demanding endeavor. Report an error in the passage at 8:49 Highlight the passage at 8:49

8:57 The very precise, upright, cross-legged posture is really crucial. You can't do that supine position. So that's kind of the answer there. Now having said all of that, there's also background. Not only that if after an hour or so, or maybe even a shorter period, you start feeling really uncomfortable, which is enormous distraction. Report an error in the passage at 8:57 Highlight the passage at 8:57

9:16 Because then you keep on going to, you know, your body's shouting at you, hey, I'm in pain here. But let alone that, there are people who have scoliosis. It's not that uncommon. A pretty significant number of people in the modern world have back problems of one sort or another. So they may just find they can't sit. So you have to say, well, sorry, but better luck in the next lifetime. Report an error in the passage at 9:16 Highlight the passage at 9:16

9:35 That can't be good advice. So people with back problems, then they may find the supine position is very good. Or take full advantage of modern technology. We have so many chairs now, high-tech chairs, not just easy chairs and lying down, but chairs that contour, that... That are somewhat reclining, give you some elevation, but still keep the back straight. You can really relax. So that's really one of the advantages of living in the 21st century. Report an error in the passage at 9:35 Highlight the passage at 9:35

10:02 There's a lot of chairs that can be used in meditation that still allow the chest to be open, the spine straight and so forth, but maybe not completely supine. Some people find that just not so good, not so helpful. So then there's all kinds of gradations in between and all kinds of chairs that we can buy to help us in that regard. Report an error in the passage at 10:02 Highlight the passage at 10:02

10:20 So people with back problems. And then, should it ever happen that you get injured or that you get ill or that you get old? Report an error in the passage at 10:20 Highlight the passage at 10:20

10:30 You may just find on occasion you just can't sit up for any sustained period or maybe just not at all. You're injured and you can't. Then once again, if one's locked so rigidly into meditation has to be done in this posture, then now you just cut out whole swaths of your life. You say, oh, I can't meditate now. I'm injured. Oh, I'm sick. Can't I have to lie in bed? Report an error in the passage at 10:30 Highlight the passage at 10:30

10:49 I broke my leg. Oh, no meditation for me now for two months. No meditation because I can't sit upright. Or you're old. You're infirm. And you just can't be sitting up like that. The body's not quite up to it. Well, we should be, I think, already anticipating. How about those situations? And can we still meditate? I'll end with an account from the Pāli Canon of the Buddha's attendant who was with him for something like 25 years or so. Report an error in the passage at 10:49 Highlight the passage at 10:49

11:15 The closing 25 years of the Buddha's life. And that, of course, was Ananda. And Ananda was with the Buddha just about all the time during that time. So he didn't have that much time for meditation, actually, because he was so attending to the Buddha. And so after the Buddha passed away into Parnivana, very shortly, very, very shortly after that, a matter of days or weeks, very short, then this great council of arhats, all of them liberated beings, 499 of them, gathered to then, amongst themselves, in this great oral tradition. Report an error in the passage at 11:15 Highlight the passage at 11:15

11:44 Not so much writing back then, but people really developing the memories and memorizing whole discourses verbatim. It was very common. And these people had exceptionally clear minds. They're not ordinary people. And so they wanted to then, of all these people, these disciples, but all of them arhats, who had been listening to the Buddhist discourses for years or decades, they wanted to then to make a compendium. Report an error in the passage at 11:44 Highlight the passage at 11:44

12:07 You know, the collected work, so to speak. And they would be all listening to this, memorizing them. And so the memory would be stored in the hard drive of their own minds, rather than writing it all down. But that was very natural back then. That was very much part of the oral tradition, A-U-R-A-L, of India at that time. Report an error in the passage at 12:07 Highlight the passage at 12:07

12:24 Very, very powerful in the Hindu and the Buddhist tradition. But they absolutely had to have Ananda, because he had heard every Dharma talk the Buddha had given for the last 25 years. That was part of his deal with the Buddha. When he agreed to be the Buddha's attendant, he said, I almost want to be there when you teach Dharma. Report an error in the passage at 12:24 Highlight the passage at 12:24

12:39 So Ananda was the greatest repository and he had an eidetic memory. He had basically photographic memory. So he was one that just couldn't leave out. But he wasn't an arhat. And this was a council only for arhats. So these 499 arhats got on Ananda's case and said, Ananda, we can't start without you. And you're not an arhat yet. So get cracking. Get back to your meditation. Finish up because we need to hold this council. Report an error in the passage at 12:39 Highlight the passage at 12:39

13:07 And we just can't start it without you. So poor Ananda had 499 arhats breathing down his back to achieve arhatship and make it snappy and a lot of pressure. So he was practicing, I'm imagining in all four postures, but one of them was the supine position. But there was so much pressure and so much pushing, he wasn't able to do it until finally he had been in the supine position and then he's shifting postures to go from the supine into the sitting. Report an error in the passage at 13:07 Highlight the passage at 13:07

13:39 He's like a tower of Pisa, he's like halfway up. And that's when he achieved arhatship. When he kind of lightened up, you know, just loosened up a bit. And then that final breakthrough came. But he wasn't lying down or sitting. He was in transition. And then the veils lifted. And that's when he became an arhat. So this shows a certain, on the one hand, an affirmation. Report an error in the passage at 13:39 Highlight the passage at 13:39

14:02 Yes, the emphasis on the classic posture is well stated. It's true. But it's very important not to be rigid about it. Because then we have all these disadvantages of, you know. Just being too locked in. At the same time, not dismissing and saying, oh, whatever, posture doesn't matter. Well, that's not true either. Posture does matter. But the supine is good enough. Report an error in the passage at 14:02 Highlight the passage at 14:02

14:21 And I've had people, some students of mine have been in retreat now for actually years, in full-time retreat. One of them, very dedicated, very pure motivation, ethics, excellent discipline. She also has a scoliosis. It doesn't make her any less disciplined or ethical and so forth. And so when she began her retreat, this is now four years ago, when she began her retreat, I think it was about 90 % of the time, she's meditating maybe 8 hours a day, 90 % of the time is supine. But she just learned, hey, I want to meditate a lot and I can't be sitting up all the time, my back just kills me. Report an error in the passage at 14:21 Highlight the passage at 14:21

14:55 But what's interesting here is as the years have gone by, then it goes from 90 % in supine to 80 to 70 to 60, that there's some shifting of the energies in the body. And it would be actually quite interesting for somebody to take an x-ray, to have taken an x-ray, she must have them, and see what might be happening here. Could there be some shifting that the back is straightening out? Report an error in the passage at 14:55 Highlight the passage at 14:55

15:17 Because she's not now just getting more macho and putting up with pain. She's finding that she can sit for longer and longer periods with no pain. And so that has been clearly a transition over the last week. A very important question. Anything else? Yes, please. Report an error in the passage at 15:17 Highlight the passage at 15:17

15:42 My name is Sally. Sally? Sally, yes. Thank you. I wondered if you could just comment on the writing in the notes that we were using last time about the long breaths and the short breaths. Sure, absolutely. That's where I'm going to go in this afternoon. So I'm not going to skip it. I was thinking about kind of jamming that in before lunch, but I thought, well, let's take a bit more leisure. Report an error in the passage at 15:42 Highlight the passage at 15:42

16:04 So we have five minutes till lunch. I think we're breaking at noon. And so when we come back, we'll have our two sessions and I'll go directly to that. The long breath, the out breath that is from the Pāli Canon, then that you'll see from the Perfection of Wisdom Sūtra and so forth. So we'll have some time to really linger there and unpack it. Report an error in the passage at 16:04 Highlight the passage at 16:04

16:21 It's such quintessential, very core, but it is worth unpacking because it's quite interesting. Report an error in the passage at 16:21 Highlight the passage at 16:21

16:29 Yes, please, way in the back. Way back in the red. Report an error in the passage at 16:29 Highlight the passage at 16:29

16:39 Hello there, my name is Renato. Renato? If you can roll the R, Renato. Renato. Grazie. Report an error in the passage at 16:39 Highlight the passage at 16:39

16:49 The three sessions this morning, two before breakfast, one before morning tea, I felt I was able to maintain awareness on the breath pretty well, reasonably. The one after afternoon tea, my mind was on a joyride most of the time. The mind was? Was on a joyride? A joyride, yes. So a comment and a question. The comment is perhaps it's a truism. Progress is not linear. That's certainly true. Report an error in the passage at 16:49 Highlight the passage at 16:49

17:18 And the question is, is the coffee at morning tea a test for me? Report an error in the passage at 17:18 Highlight the passage at 17:18

17:29 I guess I'm asking about stimulants and whether... Sure, sure. I do know that very... I don't know a single Tibetan yogi who drinks coffee. Because according to Tibetan medicine, coffee is quite abrasive. It has quite a rough impact on the body. So it's generally not considered to be... I mean, some people can stand it, not too much damage. Report an error in the passage at 17:29 Highlight the passage at 17:29

17:50 But often in Tibetan medicine, traditional Tibetan medicine, coffee is out. But Tibetans really drink their tea. So it's very, very common. But what it boils down to, and we'll see this later on about, oh, I think about Friday or so, is to be checking this out individually. And that is what type of food. I noticed this morning, I just mentioned to Jigila, that I really like yogurt. But especially in the morning, if I take it, it tends to kind of make me a bit heavy. Report an error in the passage at 17:50 Highlight the passage at 17:50

18:17 And it's nothing wrong with yogurt. It's not bad food. It's perfectly good food. But for my system, it tends to make me feel a little bit heavy. And so I think I need to skip it. So I've just asked, okay, no yogurt for me. If it's there, I really want to eat it because I enjoy it. But I really shouldn't have it. Purely individual. Absolutely not a statement about yogurt should not be eaten by yogis. Report an error in the passage at 18:17 Highlight the passage at 18:17

18:35 But for my system, not so good. It doesn't work so well. And so that's it. Just check out to see whether the tea with its caffeine, the stimulant, Does, you know, just be a scientist with respect to your own diet and see whether it's wheat tea or some, I mean, English. I've spent some time in England. Report an error in the passage at 18:35 Highlight the passage at 18:35

18:53 Man, they like their teas. You know, the spoon stays up. You know, really, really heavy, dark black tea. In which case, you're getting a powerful jolt of, you know, of the caffeine. Just check it for yourself and see whether the kind of tea, the strength of tea. The quantity of tea that you drink, whether it is actually having an agitating effect, in which case you might want to cool it by something else to drink. So for diet, that's for both food and drink, and also exercise, finding what is most conducive to helping to balance the mind. Report an error in the passage at 18:53 Highlight the passage at 18:53

19:26 It's an individual thing. Report an error in the passage at 19:26 Highlight the passage at 19:26

19:39 Okay, let's not linger here. It's just a couple of minutes before noon. So we'll come back at 2 o 'clock. We'll come back to the sessions. Maybe start incrementally moving into the next phase. But then we'll look at these really core, very quintessential instructions the Buddha himself gave on this practice. Very simple and yet very quite deep at the same time. Report an error in the passage at 19:39 Highlight the passage at 19:39

19:58 But we'll check out this afternoon. We'll see you at 2 o 'clock. Report an error in the passage at 19:58 Highlight the passage at 19:58