← B. Alan Wallace

Shamatha Retreat with Alan Wallace 2012 (part 21)

B. Alan Wallace · 2012 · 1 h 7 min · Vajrayana Institute via Internet Archive

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  • 2:54

    On the individuals participating in such a group endeavor. So we shall see. But right now, let's just have two silent sessions. And so we have, again, coming back to a metaphor I've used on a number of occasions, first, second, third gear. So just see where you are. And the most important thing, now it's entirely individual, is just see where you get the best traction. That is, is your mind, the level of agitation, clarity, ease and so forth, the level of your mind right now, which of these three levels we have so far. It really is kind of a suitable to the grade you're on that is, you know, like uphill drive. So that you really feel, yep, the gears are meshing.

  • 8:03

    Merit. Merit, yes. And the definition too. Yeah. Merit. It's a standard translation and I use it all the time and I don't like it.

  • 20:10

    If it were just easy, everybody would do it all the time. We all become enlightened, you know, just by sliding downhill. But it does tend to have its challenging moments because of all the junk we're bringing to the practice, and that tends to be pretty problematic and sometimes painful. And so on the one hand, just some inner strength. The Tibetans call it semshuk. Shuk is strength and sem is like your heart, the strength of your heart, kind of fortitude, internal fortitude, strength, forbearance, patience, inner strength.

  • 27:28

    And for very good reason. And that is, now we're practicing Vipassanā, or Vipassanā, Vipassanā in the Pāli term, and he's focusing, his whole text is, on this classic discourse of the Buddha, the four, he called it, foundations of mindfulness. Why not? Four foundations of mindfulness. Now, when one is engaging in this practice, there's definitely a role for bear attention. And that is, when you're attending to something, just try to drink it in, just try to take it in.

  • 36:48

    And there, in the practice for tomorrow, it's coming, especially from the Mahamudra and Dzogchen traditions, above all, this practice of bringing the full force of your mindfulness to the mind, to the domain of mental experience. For that, the teachings are quite uniform, that the eyes should be open. The eyes should be open. But now do you direct the eyes straight ahead or do you let them follow the line of the nose? Not uniform. Keep them open.

0:11 Just a very, very brief comment before we jump in. This is kind of a little bit of a continuation to the question to Betty, Betty Rose and Rhonda. Report an error

0:23 Something I've observed is that when we have that kind of group energy in Phuket, and I've seen it elsewhere, also in the Shamatha project five years ago, but when you have a lot of people together and very good ethics, a lot of harmony, a lot of friendship. Report an error

0:38 And then engaging in similar practice, I mean different variations, but really focusing towards shamatha. What I found now, and we've done it now, gosh, four times in Phuket and two times in the shamatha project, six longer retreats, is that people tend to do very well during the eight weeks, the three months of the shamatha project. Report an error

0:55 They really develop in the practice. Quite significantly. Enough so they get really inspired. Not just me judging from outside, but they get really inspired. And then for those who do continue on in solitary retreat or long-term retreat, for the most part they're kind of stuck on their own. I mean a few here, two, three, but most of them are, you know, like Tenzin Seppel all by herself in Kangaroo Island and then another one all by himself in Brazil and another one, and the list goes on. Report an error

1:24 And their inspiration is still there. The discipline is still, the practice is still there. But what I found is that the level of development actually tapers off a lot. It wasn't like when they were in the group. And the role of the teacher might play some role, and I can't judge that, but my strong hunch is that there's that group energy, and that really kind of inspires people, keeps momentum up, and people are really developing much more quickly in that kind of environment. Report an error

1:54 So as we look to the future, It's not just a matter of having more people dedicating themselves to full-time practice, which I think is a good thing anyway. But it will be a very interesting thing, just as a purely empirical issue, not doctrine or anything like that. But when we do have clusters of five or maybe even ten people in the same place, in that group energy, not only that their discipline is good, because that's good anyway, people tend to be practicing very well, but whether they really start ripening much more quickly. Report an error

2:24 I suspect they will, with or without a teacher. Maybe a teacher would be helpful too, probably would be. But even without a teacher living on site, in physical presence, just having a group there, I think that would make a big difference. And that hasn't quite happened yet. So I think that would be another major step forward. Five, ten people, if we can go to 20 or 30 or 40, all the better. Because then the group energy really starts to swell. Report an error

2:48 And that will be just interesting from a scientific or purely empirical perspective. Does that really have a significant impact? On the individuals participating in such a group endeavor. So we shall see. But right now, let's just have two silent sessions. And so we have, again, coming back to a metaphor I've used on a number of occasions, first, second, third gear. Report an error

3:07 So just see where you are. And the most important thing, now it's entirely individual, is just see where you get the best traction. That is, is your mind, the level of agitation, clarity, ease and so forth, the level of your mind right now, which of these three levels we have so far. It really is kind of a suitable to the grade you're on that is, you know, like uphill drive. So that you really feel, yep, the gears are meshing. Report an error

3:34 This is right where I am. This is working. You might check that out. And so you might, even in one session, start out in first gear, full body awareness. When that seems to be going pretty smoothly and it's time to... Shift upwards into second gear, then go here. If that's going smoothly, then shift up. If you start getting more distraction, kind of losing it, getting a bit more scattered, then you see about downshifting. Report an error

3:55 So it's very much like driving standard transmission, but in varying terrain. So you do want to keep attentive. How is it going now? How is it going now? And the criterion, of course, is entirely pragmatic. Entirely pragmatic. So tomorrow we're going to go into another whole practice, entirely different method. Report an error

4:13 Which is really classic in the Mahamudra and Dzogchen traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. On Sunday and Monday, we'll go into a third one. And these will go subtler and subtler as we proceed. So tomorrow, the next day, will be fourth gear. And Sunday and Monday will be fifth gear, so to speak. They do get subtler. Report an error

4:32 And it's easy to think, well, just give me the most powerful one. Give me the most, you know, why don't we just skip this? This early stuff. Let's just go to the most profound one. What do you got? What's your Rolls Royce? What's the best one? Well, that's the awareness of awareness. That's said to be the most profound. Report an error

4:47 But is that the one that's most effective? And so there's a very nice analogy for this, and that is if you come to a locked door, and you need a key, and you want to get through that door, there's a treasure on the other side, and you've got three keys. You've got a gold key, you've got a silver key, and you've got a brass key. Report an error

5:06 Which one is the best one to use to open the door? The one that works. So there it is. I mean, if the gold key doesn't turn the lock, then it's still a gold key, but it's not opening the door. And so maybe it's mindfulness of breathing is going to be the one that really takes you very, very far. In the one-year retreat we had 24 years ago, The person who really clearly progressed further than anybody else and was meditating 14 hours a day at the end of the one year, the first session being 11 hours, she was practicing mindfulness of breathing the whole time. Report an error

5:43 That's what really launched her. And other ones were doing more esoteric practices and did not do as well. One who was doing one of the most esoteric practices, he was entirely out of lead. He kind of crashed and burned. So the practice was very profound. He wasn't. And then that wasn't a good fit. Report an error

6:02 So, let's jump in. Find your own gear and know that it's flexible and just find what's most helpful. Two sessions, 24 minutes apiece. Report an error

· · ·

7:37 Alasso, any questions or comments, insights or revelations? Yes, I'm going to scan left or right this time and don't want to be unbiased. So, first one right here. Report an error

7:55 Could you explain... Your name, I think you told me before. Jeff. Jeff, thank you. The role that merit has to play in achieving... Role that... Merit. Merit, yes. And the definition too. Yeah. Merit. It's a standard translation and I use it all the time and I don't like it. It just seems too sappy. Just in my mind, as an English speaker, it just doesn't seem to grab it. The Sanskrit is bunya, the Tibetan is sunam. Report an error

8:23 The merit, what it is, is something like a spiritual momentum, kind of an energy, something that can be accumulated. It can also be lost. It's like an energy, like energy stored in a battery that you can use in different ways. You can run a toy, you can run an egg beater or what have you. It's kind of, but it's something that can be used. Report an error

8:45 And it is accumulated through engaging in virtue, whether through body, speech and mind or any combination of the above. Report an error

8:53 And for example in the practice of shamatha, let's take the example of people who are gifted. Gifted, I think this came up earlier. Gifted in mathematics or what have you. Well, some people are gifted in shamatha. Some people are gifted in shamatha. They slip right into it very quickly. They start having very meaningful experiences. Report an error

9:11 Stability comes in relatively rapidly and so forth. And so, just like anything else, you know, some people are very, just naturally, artists, architects. They often are very gifted in mental imagery, visualization. Other people have a really hard time. So where does it come from? And so merit comes basically by doing something a lot. And so if one finds one is not particularly gifted in shamatha, well then just do it a lot more. Report an error

9:40 And later on you'll be gifted. And if you die and you're reborn, then next time you'll be very gifted. It's that Lama Zopa Rinpoche, when he was born in this lifetime in Nepal, from a very early age, he was going into full lotus, he would stare at the wall and just sit in full lotus. And then when he was a toddler, he would try to keep... Report an error

9:57 Toddling back to the cave in which he meditated in his previous life. So one can say he's gifted. There was a momentum there, according to Buddhist belief, that was carrying on from one lifetime to another. But then how did he have such a head start? Because he's been a very profoundly spiritual man, I think his whole life. I've heard a number of people, he just doesn't sleep at all. Report an error

10:17 Well, that suggests he's got a lot of momentum going there. But then how did that happen? Was he just intrinsically a spiritually superior person? The Buddhist answer would be no, he just put in a lot of time. And you develop that momentum. So that's really what it boils down to. Some people are just very naturally compassionate. Or they hear about teachings of compassion, they gravitate to them and they really develop a very deep experience there. Report an error

10:39 So they have a lot of merit towards the realization of compassion. Why? Because it's been cultivated. So it can be cultivated, it can be accumulated, it can also be lost by engaging in antithetical ways. Report an error

10:53 That's kind of what it boils down to. But it can also be a very important point about merit is that it can be directed. It can be directed. And this is done by the power of aspiration. One could use the word prayer, but one doesn't really need a religious term. But when one sees that one has accumulated some degree of merit, of spiritual energy, a kind of momentum, a power of virtue, it goes by different names, then with that recognition, then one may quite deliberately Direct that merit to the realization, almost like if you're investing in a certain stock, that you're investing it in the realization of a certain vision, an aspiration, an ideal. Report an error

11:36 And so that's something very, very meaningful to do. Because virtue, I mean, engaging in virtue of any kind gives rise to merit. And then the merit, in the Buddhist understanding, then gives rise to felicity, some type of good fortune. But let's go back to this very sad example. of Whitney Houston. So here's a woman that she really had tremendous merit. Number one, to be born with such beauty. That's a fruit of virtue in past life. Report an error

12:04 She didn't earn it in this lifetime. She just had a very natural beauty. And then her voice, so exquisite. Well, she didn't earn that. I'm sure she trained it and so forth. But a lot of people will train that. I never have a voice like hers. So having such an extraordinarily beautiful voice and physical beauty. Report an error

12:20 That would be an expression of a manifestation, a fruition of merit, right? Then on top of that she became very wealthy, and on top of that she became very famous, and on top of that she became very beloved by many, many people. So all of that is the ripening of merit, merit, merit, merit. Even having a lot of power, power itself, coming to positions of great authority, that is a fruition of merit, right? Report an error

12:45 But now one can see that, all right, So you have beauty, you have wealth, you have fame and so forth. Is it going to tap out there? Now hers was a tragic end, but many people it's not a tragic end. Richard Gere also, even now, very good looking man when he was younger. People say he's pretty attractive. But he has the same thing. Report an error

13:06 But then he and George Clooney, I mean I'm not an expert on movie stars, but George Clooney, Angelina Jolie, I mean all kind of same type, gorgeous. Report an error

13:17 Famous and all of that. But some of them are using their fame, their wealth and notoriety, the fact that they're such celebrities, and they're really using that for more virtue. And my sense is with a very pure motivation. It's not so they can become more famous. They don't need that. And I know Richard Gere a little bit, and I think fame is kind of a pain in the butt for him. Report an error

13:35 Because we were sitting together talking, and some paparazzi came up, and it was kind of like, oh, I kind of wish they were this famous. And I think that really is the case. And so when your merit manifests, then does it just kind of manifest like, gee, I'm rich, I'm beautiful, I'm famous, and then you're dead? Or does it manifest in that way, the Dalai Lama is also very famous. Report an error

13:58 He's not very rich, but he's very famous and he's beloved by many people. And then he uses that in marvelous ways. So this is where dedication of merit comes in, that it may just be a flowering of a lot of bounty and saṃsāra, and then it fizzles out. The energy of it, almost like petrol in your tank. After a while it's just exhausted and then it's just finished and down you go. Or you may rise to a high level of celebrity, of influence and notoriety and so forth and then just use that for greater virtue. Report an error

14:27 Use that as a platform to do really great good in the world. And so that's where dedication, that's where the direction of merit really comes. It's very, very important. And then it relates back to the whole theme of path. I mean, do you really have a passionate yearning? To reach a path of real, genuine, irreversible spiritual evolution, that from lifetime to lifetime, whether it's many lifetimes or few lifetimes, but your aspiration is this above all, to be on a path and continue to, let's say, perfect enlightenment. Report an error

14:56 If that's an aspiration, then by all means dedicate merit to that. And don't let it get, pardon the word, pissed away by just becoming really beautiful or handsome or famous or something like that. Whatever. know because can be such It's such a mixed blessing for so many people. Women, I think especially, if they're really just radiantly beautiful. Of course, I think it must be nice to be radiantly beautiful, but I think, you know, I mean, I've never been there, so I don't know. Report an error

15:22 But for a woman especially, it is just so easy. Men do this all the time, just objectify them. And it's dehumanizing. It really is dehumanizing. And I think that would be a real mixed blessing, to be just like stunningly beautiful, or handsome for that matter, but I think especially women. And it's not their fault, it's the way men treat really stunningly beautiful women. And then they want to go back at you. So dedication is really important. Report an error

15:51 So I said that again, left or right? Anything over here? Okay, way yonder. Please tell me your name again. You said it. Renato. I do remember now. Thank you. One of the five obscurations is excitation. It comes in a little pair. Some of the ones are actually pairs. So it's excitation and the second word can be understood as anxiety or guilt. Either one is kind of a mixture. Report an error

16:18 Go ahead. That was my question. I'm wondering what the relationship is with guilt in there. It doesn't seem to fit for me. It's quite interesting, yeah. And the second part of the question is how does guilt get in the way of meditative practice? I couldn't hear the last one. How does guilt get in the way of meditative practice? How does guilt get in the way? Oh, that one I can answer. Report an error

16:40 Yeah, the Tibetan for this, the Sanskrit, I don't remember right offhand. It's, oh, the old, old translations were, what do they call it, worry and flurry, something really kind of cute but not very, not full of content. Report an error

16:53 I've seen it translated as, so, so excitation or restlessness and then anxiety. That's one translation. The Tibetan is really quite straightforward. It's a goba dan goba. Goba, I'm translating it as excitation. And then gyupa really does mean remorse or guilt, but there can be very healthy remorse. When I'm walking out here, if I accidentally step on your foot on the way out, I'm just careless, and I step on your foot, and it hurts. Report an error

17:20 I say, oh, I'm sorry, I apologize, I need to be more mindful here. And so that would be remorse. Well, that's a good thing, to step on somebody's foot, hurt them, and say, well, get out of my way. Report an error

17:30 Clearly, something's wrong there. So there is such a thing as very healthy remorse. It's remorse focused on a deed. And one recognizes, oh, I harmed someone. I don't want to do that. Feeding remorse. I'll be more careful in the future. Good. Mission accomplished. Remorse did its work. And it's good. I'm sorry. We apologize. Oh, by the way, I don't know how to say I forgive you in Tibetan. I'm pretty fluent. Report an error

17:54 I don't know how you say that. I don't think there is a phrase. They would just say, don't worry about it. It's nothing. It's cool. But they don't know how to say I forgive you. I, me, forgive you. They don't have it. So we come back to guilt. So remorse can be very healthy. It can be ethically neutral. Report an error

18:15 But then when it slips into, psychologists I think tend to call it more shame, at least in my conversation with Paul Ekman. Shame where it almost lodges in you and it becomes part of your identity. That just shame is part of who I am. I carry with myself this kind of dark, glowering cloud of shame about just basically who I am, that I'm just not. Report an error

18:35 Up to snuff and so forth. And so that can easily tap into or be related to low self-esteem. To my mind the word guilt has a pretty sharp edge to it of just feeling guilty just as part of one's marrow, one's bone marrow or something like that. That can really pull one down. That can really, really block you. To be able to progress in the practice of shamatha, and I don't like the verb but I'll use it anyway, the Buddha himself said of samādhi that samādhi arises from bliss. Report an error

19:05 Samādhi arises from bliss. And what he's getting at there is, not that it's going to be blissful from the beginning, but as you get more and more into the flow of the practice, a sense of serenity, of peacefulness, a sense of well-being, and then eventually that bliss starts to arise. The real priti, or the sharp edge of bliss. And when that's coming in, then you really start streaming through. And then samādhi really arises out of that. Report an error

19:30 And so, bliss isn't going to rise. This is not going to be arising in the same mind stream at the same time as guilt or anxiety. So guilt and anxiety looks like two edges of the same coin, in a manner of speaking. Not that they're always together, but it is one term that can be understood from two different angles. So either way, it really can be very debilitating. Report an error

19:54 Take all the joy out of the practice. So on the one hand, in shamatha practice, in any kind of spiritual practice, On the one hand, one does need some kind of internal fortitude. Spiritual practice, generally speaking, isn't that easy. I mean, there can be times that are really challenging. If it were just easy, everybody would do it all the time. We all become enlightened, you know, just by sliding downhill. But it does tend to have its challenging moments because of all the junk we're bringing to the practice, and that tends to be pretty problematic and sometimes painful. Report an error

20:23 And so on the one hand, just some inner strength. The Tibetans call it semshuk. Shuk is strength and sem is like your heart, the strength of your heart, kind of fortitude, internal fortitude, strength, forbearance, patience, inner strength. That's really indispensable if one is going to really be moving along a spiritual path and developing, progressing and so forth. But at some point you have to have more than sheer fortitude or semshuk. Report an error

20:53 There needs to be some element of joy. It's called enthusiasm, vidya. Where you're starting to take delight in the practice. Without that, it's always going to be in kind of a lower gear. But when that delight in the practice, the enthusiasm for the practice, kind of like, oh, I want to get back to my cushion. Report an error

21:10 When that starts to kick in, then it really starts to stream. And that's not going to happen if you're still fraught with anxiety or guilt. Okay? Report an error

21:24 Sufficient? Okay, good. I'll scan to the right. We're going to have to come around since I'm trying to be fair here and just go left or right but we'll hopefully get around again this evening to Jen I believe, correct? Thank you. Are you able to mix up the practices a bit so if you're getting a bit stuporosed? Report an error

21:42 If you're getting a bit? A bit stuporosed, a bit lax, a bit lax. Lax, yes. I was toying a bit with keeping the in-breath through the nostrils. Keeping the in-breath through the nostrils? So the point of focus being on the nostril, but on the out-breath, because there was a sense of getting too much in the head, too tight, trying to actually then breathe out through the visualization of the tummy. Report an error

22:14 But that's mixing and matching a bit. Yeah, that's not this practice. In the Tibetan practice, I mean, Tibetans just love to visualize. You know, drop a hat and they'll start visualizing. They really like to visualize. And so when it comes even to mindfulness of breathing, they'll start visualizing. And if it works, it works. I'm not going to criticize it. That's not the approach that I'm drawn to. Report an error

22:34 But if you're really good at visualization, they will do a whole visualization of imagining the earth coming out here and imagining it coming down to the navel and imagining it coming out and doing this whole circuit of visualization. And if it works, it works. I'm not going to criticize it. But we do know from the Theravāda approach, There's no reference to visualization at all, not even the acquired sign, which arises spontaneously. So if you're finding some kind of a heaviness, a contraction, a tightness arising in the head, then you can do, as I think it was Brian mentioned earlier, then just drop down. Report an error

23:05 That is, you're lugging. You're going, ugh, ugh, ugh. It's not working well. So then downshift, come back to your dummy, or come back to full body awareness. Mellow out. Let that energy kind of get diffuse again. Go back to deepening the sense of ease, relaxation, softness, letting go. And then when you do come up here again, I'll use a word, not saying like a weird adjective, but the quality of awareness, in my experience, the quality of awareness when it goes well, it's slender. Report an error

23:36 It's slender. That is, it's like a pinky. It's just a slender ray of awareness coming here and illuminating this little spot. But it's not muscular. It's not chunky. It's not thick. It's not like that, you know, like it's not, there's nothing heavy about it. It's just a light, almost like a little stiletto of awareness coming in there and brightly illuminating that area. Report an error

24:01 But everything around it is soft. So when you can bring that in that light touch of just mental awareness and keeping your eyes totally soft, like as if they don't even know you're meditating, your eyes just soft, vacant, not part of the project. It's tactile sensation and it's mental, and the mental is focusing on the tactile sensation. Then you won't get that heaviness. Report an error

24:26 Keep on scanning to the right. Report an error

24:31 You're both in the line, so I'll go to the back first. We'll get both, definitely both time for both. Back here. Report an error

24:42 Hello, Alan. My name's John. That's easy. Thank you. In response to an earlier question, you used the term bear attention. Yes. And I've got some related... Questions on that. One, it's placed, you didn't actually use it in the discourse on mindfulness earlier and I was wondering where it fitted in there. Secondly, where it fits into what we've been practicing over the last two days. Report an error

25:06 And then thirdly, if we were to strictly use the Buddhist definition of mindfulness, would John Kabat-Zinn's program be better named Bear Attention Based Stress Reduction? Yeah. You know, first of all, I want to really make this, really wholeheartedly, I really am very fond of John and I think he's doing wonderful work. I could just stop right there. Report an error

25:31 The fact that he uses mindfulness, I have no qualms about it whatsoever. It's a very useful definition of mindfulness. And psychologists all over the world now, there have been dozens, if not, I think scores of scientific studies on it. And it's really helpful. And why not call it, it's a nice word, mindfulness, and the opposite is mindlessness. Report an error

25:50 What's the problem? And then defining it in that context, in this secular stress reduction kind of clinical setting, as bear attention. Well, it is. It is bear attention. That is, it's not conceptually elaborated. You're not bringing in labels and judgments and so forth and so on. So bear attention. Is this compatible with Buddhist practice? Report an error

26:09 If you do that, are you doing something un-Buddhist, anti-Buddhist? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. There's nothing un-Buddhist about it. Is that the Buddhist definition? No, it's not. But then he didn't say it was a Buddhist definition, at least not in my hearing. I've had friendship with him for 22 years now. Report an error

26:26 But does this word bear attention, does this crop up in English translations of Buddhist literature? And the answer is yes, it does. And I have a lot of good friends, and a lot of them are very knowledgeable. I learned how it happened. It's actually a man I met, I've never had the good fortune to be a student, his name is Jnanaponikatera. And he wrote the first, he wrote what is still a classic, it's called The Heart of Buddhist Meditation. Report an error

26:53 It's an outstanding work and it was published like 50 years ago. And when I first started studying Buddhist meditation, that's the first book on Buddhist meditation that I read that I could really connect with when I was 20 years old. And it's really a very good book. And this is a German monk. He was living in Sri Lanka. He's been a monk for a very long time. I was in Sri Lanka in 1980. I met him there in his forest hermitage. That's all I can say. Report an error

27:16 We met. I felt privileged to meet such a distinguished monk and scholar and translator. And he introduced the term bear attention in the context of mindfulness. And for very good reason. And that is, now we're practicing Vipassanā, or Vipassanā, Vipassanā in the Pāli term, and he's focusing, his whole text is, on this classic discourse of the Buddha, the four, he called it, foundations of mindfulness. Report an error

27:41 Why not? Four foundations of mindfulness. Now, when one is engaging in this practice, there's definitely a role for bear attention. And that is, when you're attending to something, just try to drink it in, just try to take it in. Let there be some lapse, some... Some duration there before you start ladling all this stuff on top of it. I like and I don't like and labels and judgments and conceptual projections and associations and so forth. Report an error

28:07 Try to get reality straight before and linger there for a while. So this is a really good idea. Now if one reads the Sarvatthana Sutta and the great commentaries, there have been a number. There's a very good one in English by now called by Analayubiku. Very, very good. I know him. He's a very good monk. Outstanding scholar. Report an error

28:27 And I think he's wrote in English, the most definitive English translation and commentary to the Sutta. We were at a conference together last year in Germany. He's very, very, my respect. And as he comments, and it's very clear in the Sutta and in the great commentaries, there's an awful lot going on in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, more than bear attention. Report an error

28:49 An enormous amount, maybe 5 % is bear attention. But Jnana Ponakiterra, this German monk, recognized that bear attention is really crucial to get started. And he's a real professional. He's a monk. He taught other monks. He's a professional. He's fluent in Pāli, of course. And how I know about this is because I'm friends with Bhikkhu Bodhi. Report an error

29:11 And Bhikkhu Bodhi is one of our most knowledgeable, excellent scholar, translator, very good monk. He's about my age, I think. Really outstanding. I have, again, a lot of respect for him. Well, he was a long-time student of Jnanaponakitera. So he knew him very well. But what happened then, as we get into this, especially the 60s and then the 70s, is then the Saripatthana Sutta and this whole genre of practice gets popularized. Report an error

29:39 And there's no reason it shouldn't. That's not a bad thing. But to popularize it, whatever you're popularizing, Dzogchen or Vajrayana or Vipassanā or Samatha for that matter, when you popularize, you're probably going to be starting to simplify and then simplify and then simplify. And then if you want to appeal to Roman Catholic priests and Jewish rabbis and hardcore atheists and materialists and so forth, then you have to get down, you have to teach it at a common denominator so nobody gets pissed off or more likely just turned off. Report an error

30:07 So if you really want to popularize, you're going to have to be going at a very basic level. Because if you start rising up, you're going to lose this audience, and then this audience, and this audience, and after a while, all you have is Buddhists left. And so, one can say this is a skillful means to popularize, try to reach out to a very broad swath of the population, to benefit many, many people. Report an error

30:28 Exactly why is that wrong? And I would say it's not wrong at all. But what happened then was that mindfulness, which has all the nuance of these definitions we've looked at, Then it gets simplified down to it's nothing more than bear attention and then well let's say Vipassanā is nothing more than mindfulness and that's nothing more than bear attention. Now the whole wisdom tradition of Buddhism has vanished because it's all just turned out to be here now. Report an error

30:50 And so what Bhikkhu Bodhi told me was Jnanaponikatera when he saw how his term... Bear Attention, which he introduced into English language as a translation, how this was now being used as the definition of mindfulness and even the definition of Vipassanā. He basically slapped his head and said, oi, oi, oi, what did I start here? Oh my goodness, this has now gone really sappy. So I hope what I'm saying has some nuance to it, that I mean everything I say. Report an error

31:17 That it's a good thing to popularize, good thing to reach out so that Christians and Jews and atheists and agnostics and everybody can get benefit. It's a good thing. But if you lose the whole of the Buddha Dharma, or like 95 % of it, I don't think that's a good thing. And that means that a smaller portion will be interested in, even interested in, the richer definitions of mindfulness. Report an error

31:37 That'll be a smaller number. And then we see, oh, but by the way, mindfulness is not equivalent to Vipassanā. It also plays an enormously important role in Samatha. Then you may lose more people. And then you see, now here there's a lot more than bear attention. There's all these other aspects of mindfulness, this careful investigation into. Report an error

31:54 And then you say, whoa, this is getting pretty heavy now. This is professional level of bhashana. And now you're looking at maybe 3 % of your initial audience are still with you, wanting to engage in very high level and very sophisticated practice. And what I would love to see is that we keep it all. That we keep the very simple versions, but that we don't sacrifice the high for the low, and we don't sacrifice the low for the high. Report an error

32:17 Because nobody should be muffled, and nobody should be told, you can't use the word mindfulness in that way. Because that's not the right way. Because that's not the classical Buddhist way. I will never say that. And I hope nobody else does either. Because nobody's got a monopoly. There are no language police here. Report an error

32:33 They say, hey, you can't use that word. It's an hour word. So even Nirvāṇa is also the name of a rock and roll group. That doesn't mean if you achieve that rock and roll group, you know. But they can call themselves Nirvāṇa. Okay? Good. And back to Cameron. Report an error

32:53 We can come up here first. If you have a question, we can come... Actually, we'll continue rotating. I'll try to be consistent here. Back to Cameron right here. I'm new to the eyes open thing. Report an error

33:06 And I think I've heard it like eyes gazing into empty space, which has that more kind of that way. But then also that gazing more downwards. Right. And whether the eyes can unfocus or what have you. So if you could please talk about the eyes and then also the neck, whether that, I think in one of the Mahamudra texts you translated, it's kind of like the thing here is straight, but then in another one it's kind of like, but it's tucked in. Report an error

33:40 Very true, very true. So if you could talk to those. Happy to do so, sure, sure. So first of all, for mindfulness of breathing, we're kind of wrapping that up, because tomorrow we're going to go into fourth gear. And it will be different sources. We'll be leaving the Theravāda behind. And I will say, with a lot of assurance, that the method we'll look at tomorrow, even though you don't find it in the Theravāda literature. Report an error

34:00 This shamatha practice, I've not found it anywhere in the Pāli Canon or the Theravāda commentaries. Nevertheless, it's completely compatible. It's like, oh, there's nothing wrong with it. It just is not there. But coming back to mindfulness of breathing, the topic for the last two days, there seems to be no uniform instruction. Report an error

34:19 Among different traditions, in Zen and Chan, they practice mindfulness breathing. Theravāda, big time. It's practiced in the Tibetan tradition. All four schools practice it somewhat. There's no uniform instruction on whether when you're practicing mindfulness breathing, the eyes should be wide open, hooded or closed. Report an error

34:36 And different teachers teach all three. Some teachers, Tibetan teachers in particular, say it doesn't matter what kind of meditation you're doing, keep your eyes open. In Theravāda and Zen, they'll often say, hey, let your eyes be closed. It's less distracting. And then when I was receiving my training, my first training back in 1971, eyes hooded was very kind of, generally speaking, let a little bit of light in, but your eyes not so open that you get distracted by what's happening in the visual field. Report an error

35:06 So hooded, but some light coming in. So there you go, you get open, hooded and closed. Which means the moral of the story that I draw from that is, do whatever you feel like. For mindfulness of breathing, whatever just feels better. In other words, we come back to sheer pragmatism. Just like you lie down, you sit up. Whatever works best. Report an error

35:25 And this is the beauty. I mean, there are many beauties of shamatha, but one of them that I think is a very big beauty of it is that the criterion or the criteria of doing it properly, doing it effectively, successfully, are so transparent. There's no mystery about it. If you're practicing Vajrasattva meditation and you do 100,000 Vajrasattva, exactly how do you know how well it's gone? Report an error

35:48 It's not so easy because a lot of the benefits may be in future lives or hidden or subconscious and so forth. And that's true for a lot of practices, especially these very esoteric ones. It's not so obvious at the beginning. But with shamatha, it's just transparent. And that is as you're practicing, as an hour goes by, as a day goes by, as six months of retreat goes by, Are you getting more mellow, softer, more relaxed, more at ease in body and mind? If you are, good, the practice is working. If you're not, then fix it. Because it's not working. Report an error

36:18 That's the first one. Obviously, that's not enough. Taking a whole bunch of Valium might do the job. But there's the first one. And then is the mind getting stable? Or is it not? If it's not, it's not working very well. Or you need to modify the practice or keep at it. But that's a criteria. And then vividness. Mind becoming clearer, sharper, more radiant, greater resolution. Report an error

36:38 And so, whatever is working, that's what you follow. And so, there we are. Now, I'll just give a little sneak preview tomorrow, for tomorrow's practice. And there, in the practice for tomorrow, it's coming, especially from the Mahamudra and Dzogchen traditions, above all, this practice of bringing the full force of your mindfulness to the mind, to the domain of mental experience. Report an error

37:00 For that, the teachings are quite uniform, that the eyes should be open. The eyes should be open. But now do you direct the eyes straight ahead or do you let them follow the line of the nose? Not uniform. Keep them open. So could they just be hooded? Not wide open, but just hooded. Yeah, that's open enough. But do you direct them outward, downwards, what have you? Report an error

37:25 The classic instructions that I've seen again and again are let your awareness come to rest. Your visual gaze come to rest in the space in front of you. So I'll do that right now. Not right now. You can tell eye to eye that I'm focusing on your face and on your eyes. We can sense that, right? And now you're going to see something really obvious. Report an error

37:46 And now you know I'm not focusing on you. I don't know exactly what that looked like, but I know you could tell. And what I was doing is something ever so simple. I was withdrawing my attention. It was like an arrow. Instead of the arrow going boing and hitting you in the forehead or hitting you in the eyes, so I'm making eye to eye contact. Report an error

38:03 Instead of going out and reaching you, I pulled back like a yo-yo. I pulled back and hovered in mid-air. And so now you're out of focus. If there were something right there, you know, halfway between it, that would probably be in focus. But all there is is empty space, and that's where I'm hanging out. So everything else is out of focus, and that's the idea. The analogy that comes to my mind immediately is parking a car in a garage, and then hitting your little remote, and going beep, beep, and it's locked. Report an error

38:31 And then you walk away. So you've parked your car, you've locked it, and now you walk away. And so that's what you're doing with your visual gaze, is you're parking it in mid-air, and then going beep, beep, and then walking away. You're taking your attention and directing it to an entirely different domain of experience. So there was a movie done a long time ago by Desjardins, I think it is, some French name, Desjardins perhaps, I saw it many years ago. Report an error

38:56 And in the film, it was a Dharma film on Tibetan Buddhism, but he got video footage. Of some of the great Dzogchen masters of the late 20th century, including Dujum Rinpoche, Dingo Kienchen Rinpoche and some others. And he got video footage. Have you seen it? Video footage while they're resting in Dzogchen. How would you describe it? I have my own words, but how would you describe it? Just go ahead. Report an error

39:23 You look at their face. If you didn't know what's going on, you just saw their face, what would you think? Report an error

39:39 You saw all of that. Do you think? You have to imagine now. Do you think? I mean, number one, I think you're right. But number two, though, if you didn't know what they were doing, If you didn't know what they were doing and you just saw this old man with that face, what would you think? Report an error

39:58 Well, my impression is different, but staring at something means I'm staring at Cameron's eyes. I'm staring at his face. Did it look like that? I don't think so. It looked like mashed potatoes. Like, hello? Hello? They could have been retarded, you know? Now we know, you and I know, come on. These are some of those brilliant people in the 20th century for Dzogchen, for Tibetan Buddhists, and these are brilliant minds. So we know they're not. But if you look just at the face and you have none of the background, they're out to lunch. Report an error

40:30 The face is there, the gaze is there, but it's anything that... Because they're, you know, they're in another space. They're in another space entirely. Well, that's the idea. They park their car, but then they took their awareness someplace outside of visual domain. Visual domain. And when there ain't... Report an error

40:49 When you meet such a person and you engage with them, then you don't have a sense. Hello. Oh yes, nice to meet you. What's your name? That's not at all it. No, they have total contact. They're very engaged with you. They offer you their full attention. They're there, very, very human, very present with you. Report an error

41:09 So they're very normal. In fact, not even normal. They're richly human. When you engage with them on one-on-one, you receive teachings from them, very present, very human and so forth. But when they go into their meditation, they pull back. So the simple point there is, you can park your gaze there, but don't stay there. Just beep it and get out of the car and go elsewhere. But we'll have more to say about that tomorrow. Report an error

41:35 So, swing around. Okay, and we will go, we'll get to you. I'm quite sure the time is, we still have a few more minutes. I'll try to be brief. Your name? Fiona. Fiona. Yes. I just have a question about pain because... Report an error

41:52 Now sometimes I can be quite stable and then something arises like knee pain, but it's like it doesn't belong to me. So it's just there, it's not distressing. I'm just thinking, do I need to do something about that and am I wrecking my knees or is it just okay to let it be? That's a very good question and I want to be rather careful with it. And that is, could you wreck your knee if you went into a very deep samādhi? Report an error

42:21 I mean, let's imagine you continue for a thousand hours or so and you really start going very deeply into samādhi such that knee pain just starts to fade out because you're so focusing your attention on the breath or focusing on the mind and so forth that you're not even noticing. Report an error

42:36 But there's knee pain. And there's knee pain going for hour after hour, day after day after day. Could you blow out the cartilage in your knees? Possibly. Yeah, it does happen. There are quite a number of very... Very senior yogis and monks who just never exercised. And their bodies are not in good shape. And so a bit of exercise might have been a good idea to keep it going. Report an error

43:01 Not because they're wimpy or they can't take it, but they really can take it very easily. But the body needs its due. That's why eating if one can, a balanced diet, and getting sufficient exercise is a way to really support your practice. It's a good idea. And so there's a little bit of nuance. So I can't just say, oh yes or no, I can't give you a one-liner here. And that is, should you immediately say, oh, some pain's arising, I better do something, sort of wimp out. Report an error

43:27 Oh, there's one extreme. If a little bit of pain is arising and it's not perturbing you, it's not distracting you, then let it be, carry on. But then be aware, if this is persisting, persisting, and you go and put in a couple of hundred hours of knee pain, it may actually do some damage. And then you might want to care about that. So, a bit of just good... Report an error

43:48 Sound judgment in that regard. If you have, especially when you get off the cushion, if you feel like it might have been really strained, you may be pulling cartilage and so forth. Same thing, go for the hips, the lower back and so forth. This is why complementing meditation with yoga is a really good idea. And just kind of keeping your eyes, you know, really sound judgment, keeping the eyes open, putting up with a bit of discomfort in the body, that's good, that's part of the practice. Report an error

44:12 Putting up with an intense pain in the body, not a good idea. Shift your posture, right? But be also sensitive that even if it's not bothering you that much, it could be doing some damage. Not necessarily, but just want to be sensitive to that, that you really don't want to damage the body through meditation. Report an error

44:30 Okay? Good. Final one for tonight. Back here. Thank you. Report an error

44:38 Thank you. I'm Peter. Peter, thank you. I've got a question. I'm a bit scared it's throwing out a heresy. Heresy. Oh, I love heresy. In this setting. But it's a true dilemma for me. Yes. A lot of my very influential learning has been along the lines of what Krishnamurti gave to the world. Yes, yes, very brilliant man. Very, very compassionate and a tremendous teacher. Yes, indeed. And you've used a couple of times the word path and very tentatively just before you used the word progress. Report an error

45:18 Yeah. And there's a general... kind of underlying assumption, I think, that we're trying to improve ourselves through developing our skills. Krishna Murthy always, as far as I've seen, argued staunchly against any sort of progress or anything that would futurise just the fact of waking up to what's going on and what we're doing. Report an error

45:52 I actually feel quite shaken by putting that forward because it seems totally contrary to what you're teaching. But I'd love to hear what you say about it. Yes and no. He's such a complex character, Krishnamurti. I'm sure you've studied him much more than I have. But when I was 20, I picked up two books almost simultaneously. One was a book on Dzogchen, which was Love at First Sight. Report an error

46:19 And right around the same time I picked up the Penguin Krishnamurti Reader. And I was reading those kind of in tandem. So Krishnamurti was coming with a big broom and just sweeping out all kinds of crap out of my mind. And then Padmasambhava with his Okshan text was just filling it up with, wow, treasures of here's a path. Here's a view, a way of viewing reality, a meditation, a way of life to fathom the deepest resources, the very ground of being, the nature of your own awareness to the ultimate level. Report an error

46:49 So I was getting both simultaneously, right? And savoring both, valuing both. Report an error

46:58 Krishnamurti is such a complex character. And Lama is brilliant, that's for sure. I think it's kind of indisputable, incredibly bright. But he's also coming from this background of having been identified as an avatar, as a savior, the new messiah. And having that burden to bear and then not bearing it, throwing it off with some maybe even contempt, you know better than I. And then... Report an error

47:19 Really responding against a lot of the baggage, the momentum, the ritual, the weight of tradition. There's a good word. Throwing out the weight of tradition. That India, being such an ancient contemplative and spiritual civilization, 5,000 years old, that means there's an awful lot of baggage there. It can be good baggage, but it's still baggage. And so he was very, very contemporary in this regard, shucking off, abandoning the whole notion, I'm a messiah, I'm avatar, this and this. Report an error

47:49 And shucking off, I'm a good Hindu, I belong to the Vedic tradition. He didn't belong to any tradition. He was really stepping out. And so I think he really stirred the pot. And he got people of all sorts to really challenge their assumptions. And he was enormously useful to me personally. Because I'm coming from a Christian background. My father is a theologian. Report an error

48:06 So I had a lot of baggage to deal with myself. And he was very, very helpful. Having said that, and his choiceless awareness, he coined that term. And people like Joseph Goldstein and others who were traveling around in India in the early 70s, they picked up on that, they attended lectures of his, and they basically took his choiceless awareness, brought it into Buddhism, and then started calling that a Buddhist practice, and started calling that Vipassanā. Report an error

48:30 I think we give credit where credit is due. It's not a Buddhist practice. The Buddha never talked about choiceless awareness, it's not a Buddhist term, and the definition of it is not a Buddhist definition. It's Krishnamurti. Give Krishnamurti the credit for that. And say, hey, we're Buddhists, we love Vipassanā, and we also like Krishnamurti, and he taught choiceless awareness, we like it too, so we're going to do both, rather than trying to slip it in the back door and say, this is a Buddhist practice. Report an error

48:51 And it's Vipassanā. It's not. It's Krishnamurti. Give him his credit. And so, there's all of that. And, I'd have to say my major reservation about Krishnamurti is that he really seemed quite dismissive. Quite dismissive of teachings and of traditions. That have tremendous value. That it was almost as if he was teaching, I have the only way. And now, wait a minute, if I have the only way, why are you not calling that way, path, pada, pada, marga? Report an error

49:25 Suddenly, Krishnamurti is the only way. But this is the only path. This is the non-path path, but this is the only one. And so there are fundamentalist Krishnamurti followers, as there are fundamentalist Buddhists and everything else, that disparage anything else. And I found him rather, that was the one part that I really couldn't, couldn't, couldn't. Report an error

49:43 Take two. It's as if he was the first one in the whole history of India that got it right. Because the Buddha was teaching a path. There's just no question. Dhammapada, you know. And the path, the Arya path, the stream enter and so forth and so on. Path runs through all the Buddhist teachings. It runs through Patañjali, the Pandana Yoga Sutras. Report an error

50:02 There's a path. It starts with ethics. Yama and Niyama. It goes to asanas and pranayama. There's a path. And there's a lot of wisdom there. And the Sankhya system and the Vedanta system and the Jains. And so there's an awful lot of wisdom there, you know, by people who are following a path and they're flowering. They're flowering. There's Nagarjuna, he followed a path. Report an error

50:22 He was a magnificent human being. Shantideva was a spectacular human being and he's following the Mahāyāna path. And there are an awful lot of others that are really just spectacular human beings by any criterion, you know. And to say, well, but begone path. It's a wrong idea. Well, wait a minute, you mean all these people were wrong and you're the first person to get it right? I like what you taught, but I don't like exclusivism. Report an error

50:49 That's why I couldn't stay in Christianity. They have the only path. I'm sorry, I just can't believe that. And I don't believe that Buddhism is the only path either, and nor is Krishnamurti. So I think he could have toned it down a bit with this dismissal of everybody who's followed a path as if it's all a waste of time, and he was the only one that got it right. Report an error

51:09 Maybe that's an extreme reading of him, but that was certainly an impression I got. So I think he made a great contribution, among many other people making great contributions. And for some temperament, or at a phase in practice, to abandon all notion of path, to let it be right in the present and be totally attentive with choiceless awareness to what is happening now. Report an error

51:31 Don't think tomorrow, don't think yesterday, don't think of where you came from or where you're going, don't think of acquiring this or achieving that. Let it all be and just come right into the immediacy of the present. There's a great value in that. Great value in that. And you find it in Tibetan Buddhism. Report an error

51:47 You find it in Vipassanā. You find it there as well. It's very explicit in Dzogchen and in Mahamudra. And this was the first form of Tibetan Buddhism that just absolutely hooked me. And then it was 20 years before I had the opportunity to really start training in it. I had to go through a 20-year probation period. But in Dzogchen, And we'll be delving into that a little bit over the next couple of days. There is a Dzogchen view. Well, if you study Krishnamurti, you can glean from that a way of viewing reality. Report an error

52:18 I mean, he talked a lot, and he wrote a lot, and it was quite consistent. There is a certain, it wasn't just a little dip of this and a little dab of that. He wasn't just kind of mindlessly spouting off little pearls of wisdom. There's a real coherence. In his teachings, it's the Krishnamurti view. So you can learn the Krishnamurti view. You study a lot, you think about it, you ponder it, and then you say, okay, this is the view he was espousing. Report an error

52:42 It's the Krishnamurti view. There's a lot of depth to it, a lot of insight. There's also a Dzogchen view. And then when it comes to, but here's where we find a real strong parallel with Krishnamurti. Report an error

52:53 You're introduced in classic sequence. If you study Dzogchen, you're introduced to the view. It's not an indoctrination. It's a teaching to see whether it resonates or not, whether it stirs something within you, whether it resonates, that's a good word. And then if it does, you really start viewing reality in that way from a deeper perspective. Report an error

53:10 It's very much in the immediates of the present moment, but viewing from a deeper dimension of awareness that's not all caught up here in the conditioning of our conceptual mind. Then, interestingly enough, I mean, I think it's fascinating, when you go into Dzogxian meditation, it's sometimes called non-meditation. Report an error

53:29 There's a classic text that I have now re-translated with a big commentary called Buddhahood Without Meditation. I think Krishna Buddha would have loved it. Buddhahood without meditation. Well, without meditation it also implies no path. It's Buddhahood, now that you've been introduced to the Dzogchen view, the view of the great perfection, now the meditation is to release all doing, all additions onto consciousness. Report an error

53:57 To be resting in the utter immediacy of the present moment. With an openness, but an openness that does not set up a bifurcation of subject-object duality. An openness that is unmoving openness. It doesn't launch off and say, oh look, like that. It's resting in utter stillness, but with a panoramic vision that is attentive, that is aware of all that arises, but doesn't go out, latch onto in a mode of grasping, labeling and so forth. Report an error

54:26 And so it's non-meditation in the sense that you're not doing anything. It's not doing something called meditation, it's un-meditation. And then there's a way of life that supports that quality of awareness that is itself an expression of viewing reality from this perspective of Dzogchen. So I think there could be a doctoral dissertation in here somewhere to check this out very closely. There are clearly differences, but certainly some similarities as well. Report an error

54:55 And that's why a number of people are drawn to both. But then one can ask, might there be some complementarity here? And that is when you're actually in the practice itself, and this actually, this has now parallels down to what we're doing here. When you're, just simple practice, mindfulness of breathing. Report an error

55:12 When you're actually doing it, right in the moment, you've learned the instructions and you want to do it, you've decided, yes, I want to do it, and you're doing it. In that moment, there's no sense of path. There's no sense of progress. There's no sense of, I want to achieve this, how long will it take? You're just doing it. And that's doing it correctly. You're just doing it. Report an error

55:31 No notion of path. When you come out though, and then you're slipping back into your conceptual mind in which you have a personal history, you hopefully have some kind of a future, you probably do of some sort, then in that context, then we can ask questions that are meaningful to human beings. Report an error

55:49 Questions that are meaningful to human beings. And that is, is there some transformation taking place? Am I moving in a good direction? Am I going around in circles? Am I becoming more mean-spirited, more selfish, more self-absorbed, Report an error

56:04 more insensitive to other people. That can happen. In which case, when it's going on a path, it's backwards. That's not a good thing. On the other hand, as you're meditating from day to day to day, if you find just spontaneously as you engage with people, you're more attentive, more sensitive to their needs, more caring. Report an error

56:26 Generally, a greater quality of mindfulness and presence in your day-to-day activities. And when you go into meditation, you don't send so much time flummoxing about and meandering thoughts and junk and blah, blah, blah, the OCDD. You're finding, no, as you're coming in, the mind does tend to slip in more easily, more stably, greater stability, clarity. We're going to call that a path. And it's a path in the right direction. Report an error

56:49 And that's what any spiritual practice does. That it does have an impact. That there's some type of a transformation and evolution, a growth of spiritual maturation. And we see a person like Krishnamurti who's a spiritually very mature person. Report an error

57:04 So for some people, I think he was probably clobbered over the head so many times with tradition and the weight of dogma and doctrine and orthodoxy and marga and moksha and all of that, that he decided, let's put another spin on this. We can get too caught up in all of this. And locked in and then rigid and orthodox and even then fundamentalist. Let's start breaking some vases here. Getting people shaken up a little bit. Report an error

57:31 And get them back to come to the immediacy of the present moment. So in that regard I think he was doing something useful. But if we're to really follow him and if we must draw the conclusion that he was the first person that got it right and everybody who came before him got it wrong, I don't think even he would be so bold. Report an error

57:48 He was very ambivalent, complex. Because I've read him not too long ago, his comments about Buddha. And he made a comment, if it's not a direct quote, it's pretty close. He said, I admire him more than anyone else in all of India. Something pretty close to that. Like, he was the top, he was the greatest, the Buddha. Report an error

58:12 Oh, good, how do you feel about Buddhism? Theravāda Buddhism, Mayana Buddhism, the 18 schools of early Buddhism, the four schools of philosophical analysis in Buddhism, the Vajrayana, the four schools of Vajrayana. How much about Buddha? Report an error

58:23 How do you feel about that? He had no patience for any of that at all. So he really had no interest in Buddhism per se. But Buddha as an individual had tremendous, I think it was genuine reverence for him. But he wanted to disconnect him from everything that flowed from him. But now exactly what is the nature of the Buddha that you revere so much? Report an error

58:44 Do you have some inside scoop that you're just sidestepping 2,500 years of tradition by means of which we know about the Buddha? Do you have clairvoyant access to him? Who is this Buddha that you revere so much? Do you know him independently of tradition or by way of tradition? If you know by way of tradition, then how can you abandon the tradition but revere the person behind it? Report an error

59:04 So it gets complex there. It gets complex. So when all is said and done, these practices that I'm teaching here, whether or not you like the word marga or even the notion of marga and transformation and path and so forth, I will stand by, I will stand. Report an error

59:21 And say, I think these practices are really, really helpful, regardless of worldview. So the mindfulness of breathing, I stand by it. I've been teaching it for a long time. I still practice it. I think it's really terrific. And the next two practices, they just actually just go deeper and deeper. And so whether one finds welcoming, comfortable, resonates with some of the theory in which I'm couching these practices, that's bound to differ from one person to another. Report an error

59:50 And then just take whatever's helpful. In terms of context. If it's helpful, of course, why not? If it just doesn't resonate, because you're really a Krishnamurtian at heart, but you find, well, actually this could make me go deeper into Krishnamurti's teachings and this is valuable, then by all means, just take whatever's helpful. Report an error

1:00:07 And then absolutely don't worry about notions of heresy. And never anybody ever feel afraid about asking any question in this group. And no fearful questions. Okay? Thank you. You're very welcome. Thank you for the question. Good, and on that note, what I'd like to suggest now, in a way that may or may not be in accordance with Krishnamurti, but it certainly in accordance with my own worldview and that of Buddhism, and that is, again, leaving aside, I think your question was absolutely legitimate, and, not but, and, there are such things as very meaningful aspirations. Report an error

1:00:42 There are such things as very meaningful aspirations for this world, this very troubled world. Many problems that we're facing, environmentally, economically, socially, you don't need me to tell you about it. But there are also many possibilities, and we see so many people of good heart, of really meaningful, noble aspirations, and creativity and altruism and so forth. Report an error

1:01:04 There's an awful lot of good happening in the world as well, socially, environmentally, in science so much goodness, in medicine so much goodness, and in spirituality. People really who are the peacemakers, the healers in the Muslim tradition, the Jewish tradition and so forth. There's a lot of good out there. We get smacked every day by way of media with how much bad is happening. Report an error

1:01:24 But there's also a lot of nobility taking place in the world and there are nobility in our own aspirations as well. I don't think anybody here is an exception. And so as we bring this day to a close, what I would invite you to do, it's only that, is to bring forth your most meaningful aspirations. What is meaningful for you? Report an error

1:01:43 We have many aspirations. I'll give you my most trivial one. I prefer dark chocolate over milk chocolate. That's about the most trivial aspiration I have. If I have a choice, I'll go for dark chocolate. If I never saw chocolate again in my life, I really wouldn't care one way or another. But if I have a choice, what I'm saying is there's this whole spectrum of desires and aspirations. Report an error

1:02:01 I think that's my most trivial. Then I have other aspirations I think are not trivial at all. In terms of my own spiritual maturation, how I would love to continue to develop as a human being. I'm certainly not finished. What I'd love to see take place in the world, I think I'm very confident. I have meaningful aspirations of my own. They're kind of my business. And so here we've spent a day, I would say, of meaningful endeavor, meaningful conversation. Report an error

1:02:26 I think the practices are meaningful. I've tried to make the teachings as meaningful as possible, so that's for you to judge individually. But I think we've done something overall in which there's merit. There's some virtue here, something good, something wholesome. And if so... And I would suggest there's some kind of a momentum and energy that comes from this and that we can direct it with the power of our own aspirations. And in Buddhism, traditional terminology, we call that dedicating merit. Report an error

1:02:51 You don't need to use the terminology. You don't need to be religious about this. But for just a couple of minutes, if you will, let's just sit quietly. If you will, bring to mind, it's absolutely individual, your own most meaningful aspirations for yourself, for the world around you. Report an error

1:03:06 So let's just be quiet. I give a tiny bit of guidance, but it's very individual. Report an error

1:03:23 So you may just for a moment reflect what brought you to this retreat in the first place. There must have been some idea, some aspiration, some sense that this could be meaningful, beneficial, lead to the fulfillment of some aspirations you already had before you came here. Report an error

1:03:45 You may recall those earlier aspirations and Report an error

1:03:52 you may invoke right now, right now, what do you value? What would you love to see emerge from the practice you've done today? Report an error

1:04:04 Where would you love to see this lead? In terms of benefit for yourself, the people around you, the world at large. If you will, bring forth your most meaningful aspirations and direct whatever goodness from this day to the realization of those ideals. Let's Report an error

· · ·

1:05:22 bring this evening to a close. Report an error

1:05:33 You notice I do very little ritual. It's not because I'm anti-ritual. But I figure if we start out with minimal, then whatever ritual we do, it may be actually meaningful. I do a lot of ritual. It often gets pretty thin. And so there's one little ritual that I do. And that is bowing, showing my respect. Report an error

1:05:49 To the purity in every one of us here. It's called Buddha nature. To that I bow. And so that's what that's about. When you see me sit on the cushion, that's not my fingers. That's a ritual. It's me reminding me of impermanence. The way I like to phrase it, dead man talking. So there I am. This is a bit, I'm sitting higher than maybe anybody in the room. So it makes me special, right? Higher. Except for this is a dead guy talking. This guy's going to be dead really soon. So it's just kind of a reminder. Report an error

1:06:19 Whatever it is, look, you're looking at a very short period here. Chill. Just pass on what you can. You're going to be dead soon anyway. Relax. It makes me really happy, very relaxed about it. It doesn't make me morbid at all. I don't think I'm a morbid person at all. But I get pretty relaxed about death because it's coming any day now. Report an error

1:06:38 So that's what that's about. And that was a little ritual we did here, but hardly any ritual. It's mostly just content. So on that note, get a good night's sleep if you'd like to go to bed as you did before. This is your last chance before we move on to practice tomorrow and we'll try another way of falling asleep. A bit more challenging. But first things first is get a good night's sleep and see you tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock. Report an error

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Talk by B. Alan Wallace. Original at Vajrayana Institute via Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/ShamathaRetreatWithAlanWallace2012. Licensed CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. Transcript generated automatically and may contain errors; the audio is the authoritative version.

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