← B. Alan Wallace

Shamatha Retreat with Alan Wallace 2012 (part 22)

B. Alan Wallace · 2012 · 1 h 10 min · Vajrayana Institute via Internet Archive

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  • 0:14

    So in terms of different shamatha methods, I mentioned before that if one is very keen on following the stages of generation and of completion in Vajrayana Buddhism, so some of you will know what that means, others don't worry about it, but practices that clearly entail an awful lot of visualization, then the method of generating a mental image and focusing on that is a very good preparation. Because it's developing not only stability and vividness, but explicitly developing your visualizing abilities, which then you'll put to great use in the more advanced practices.

  • 0:52

    Now, if one is very keen on foundational vipassanā practice, and the sort of the satipaṭṭhāna, the four applications of mindfulness, then the Buddha himself explicitly recommended mindfulness of breathing. It brings you right into the body, but then into the body of the mind, and it's just this utterly smooth segue. Venturing into the Vipassanā practice of the close application of mindfulness to the body. So it's just utterly smooth. The whole transition is smooth.

  • 4:59

    So before venturing into more of a theoretical explanation and context for this practice we're now starting to explore, I'd like to go back to these nine stages of the natural development or maturation of one's attention skills. So we're back on page two of the notes. But I want to really strongly emphasize that when looking at something that is so clearly a path, A sequence. It's very, very easy to get into the notion, especially us modern Westerners, but I think it's not unique to us, is to look upon each of these nine stages as goals.

  • 6:06

    So let's try to develop a different ambience by taking another analogy. My sense is that the east coast, going up the east coast of Australia is quite lovely, isn't it? A lot of very beautiful scenery as you just kind of go up the coast, wavering in. And you must have secondary roads, not just a freeway, but secondary roads, going through the farmland and through the blue hills and so forth. And so imagine that you'd like to take a week just for a driving vacation and taking it easy, getting off the freeways and, you know, some really quaint towns here and there, some lovely, magnificent landscapes, some of that I've seen.

  • 36:51

    So let's go to the next page. What is coarse laxity? And this is where your attention mostly disengages from the object due to insufficient vividness. So with excitation, it's as if your attention is focused here, you want it to be focused here, but excitation goes... It knocks you off target. So if you're my target, it goes bing and it's off to something else. A sensory field, a memory, a fantasy, but bing and I've lost the target.

0:14 So in terms of different shamatha methods, I mentioned before that if one is very keen on following the stages of generation and of completion in Vajrayana Buddhism, so some of you will know what that means, others don't worry about it, but practices that clearly entail an awful lot of visualization, Report an error

0:34 then the method of generating a mental image and focusing on that is a very good preparation. Because it's developing not only stability and vividness, but explicitly developing your visualizing abilities, which then you'll put to great use in the more advanced practices. Now, if one is very keen on foundational vipassanā practice, and the sort of the satipaṭṭhāna, the four applications of mindfulness, then the Buddha himself explicitly recommended mindfulness of breathing. Report an error

1:04 It brings you right into the body, but then into the body of the mind, and it's just this utterly smooth segue. Venturing into the Vipassanā practice of the close application of mindfulness to the body. So it's just utterly smooth. The whole transition is smooth. You're attending to the breath, then you're attending to the body. With attending to the body, you also attend to feelings in the body, which moves you to the second of the four applications of mindfulness. Report an error

1:30 But feelings arise not only in the body, but in the mind. Attending feelings in the mind, that segues over to the close application of mindfulness to the mind. And so very, very smooth. And mindfulness of breathing is really the launching pad to make the mind serviceable for that type of insight, insight practice. Report an error

1:48 But now for those who are very, very drawn to, in terms of real focus of practice, to really fathoming the nature of the mind, of consciousness itself, as in, for example, the practices within Tibetan Buddhism of Mahamudra and Dzogchen, or frankly one could say also Chan and Zen in East Asian Buddhism. Report an error

2:08 Then the practice we're about to venture into is really exactly right on the spot. Because once again, of course, we're developing stability and vividness, but we're going right to the mind, not yet quite into the Vipassanā mode, but right on the cusp of it. And for those of you, I'm sure there are some of you who have been trained in Vipassanā, modern Vipassanā tradition, then as I introduce this practice, and you can see the instructions on it in the notes, you might look at this and say, we call this Vipassanā. Report an error

2:39 And, you know, tomatoes, tomatoes. It does give rise to a lot of insight. In this context that I'm teaching it in, it is presented as a shamatha practice, and we'll see why. Not only does it give rise to stability and vividness of attention, but it's helping to dissolve the mind. It's leading to dissolving your mind, your familiar mind, your coarse mind, into this underlying continuum, which in the Pāli is called bhavaṅga, as we'll see very shortly in the Tibetan tradition. Report an error

3:05 It's called the alayavishnana, or the substrate consciousness. But it's right on the cusp, and it bears a lot in common. In fact, it really could be easily taken for a Vipassanā practice, which is no problem, just different semantics, but also very similar to Zen, to just sitting, to Sazen. And then one finds, as we venture into this practice, also for those who are admirers of Krishnamurti, that this also is quite close to the way he teaches also. Report an error

3:33 Not the same, but you can say, well, these are definitely next-door neighbors. So, let's just go ahead and jump into it. We'll have two sessions. Each one will be guided. It's called by various names, settling the mind in its natural state. It's called taking awareness and appearances as the path. And it's called taking the mind as the path. All of those three. The term path does crop up a lot. Report an error

3:55 But when you're actually doing the practice, you're not thinking of path and progress and stages. You're absolutely in the moment and just doing it. Okay? So, jump in. As always can be practiced in the supine or the sitting position. Report an error

· · ·

4:59 So before venturing into more of a theoretical explanation and context for this practice we're now starting to explore, I'd like to go back to these nine stages of the natural development or maturation of one's attention skills. Report an error

5:19 So we're back on page two of the notes. But I want to really strongly emphasize that when looking at something that is so clearly a path, A sequence. It's very, very easy to get into the notion, especially us modern Westerners, but I think it's not unique to us, is to look upon each of these nine stages as goals. Report an error

5:41 So if you've achieved one, okay, you're able to observe thoughts, good, congratulations, you'll achieve stage one. But then to think, okay, now how long is it going to take before I achieve stage two? I want to get there quickly. Are we there yet? Are we there yet? I think I'm about there. And then stage three and then kind of like one goal after another. And that's a way to poison the whole teaching. It really gets totally screwed up if you take that approach. Report an error

6:06 So let's try to develop a different ambience by taking another analogy. My sense is that the east coast, going up the east coast of Australia is quite lovely, isn't it? A lot of very beautiful scenery as you just kind of go up the coast, wavering in. And you must have secondary roads, not just a freeway, but secondary roads, going through the farmland and through the blue hills and so forth. Report an error

6:28 And so imagine that you'd like to take a week just for a driving vacation and taking it easy, getting off the freeways and, you know, some really quaint towns here and there, some lovely, magnificent landscapes, some of that I've seen. And you're going to kind of do a loop. Loop up there and going around and then coming back home. And you've also checked it out a little bit and you know some really nice bed and breakfasts that you're going to stay. Report an error

6:54 So the first night is going to be here and the second night there and so forth. And it's going to be one week, got it all planned out. And you're going to do some nice loop. I can imagine that would be a very, very pleasant vacation. Report an error

7:06 Here's how you can totally screw it up. And that is, as you leave Sydney, thinking, alright, the first bed and breakfast, how far is that from here? Are we there yet? Can we get there maybe a bit quicker? I'd really like to get that bed and breakfast quickly. Can we just get the freeway and skip those secondary routes? Just get to that bed and breakfast, maybe get there a bit early. Report an error

7:25 And once we're there, maybe we can skip that bed and breakfast and get to the second one already. No, let's really get on the fast lane and get to the third bed and breakfast as quickly as possible. Oh no, this is leading to a logical conclusion. Let's stay home. Report an error

7:42 Then we got there really quickly. And didn't need to mess around with all that loop-de-loop with all the scenery and all that stuff. Just stay home and watch television. And so the ambience here is much more like, hey, this is a really wonderful journey. And you should savor every moment of it. This is a path of exploration, a path of insight, a path of maturation, a path of healing the mind. It's really good for you. Report an error

8:07 So savor every moment. But then what do we have these stages for? Well, the stages are, I think I've given some indication already, So that you have some sense of, well, when you're here, should you expect, when you're just starting out, that you will be able to maintain your attention for a minute or so? Report an error

8:23 Should you expect that? No, you really shouldn't expect that at all. You should expect you'll have hardly any continuity. But don't be disappointed, that's normal. If you find you're forgetting the object, your mind is very clouded, the mind is very turbulent. If you find you think, it seems like you're having more wandering thoughts than before. Hey, no, that's good, that's normal, that's absolutely right par for the course. Report an error

8:44 And so you don't discourage yourself, right? But then as you go into the practice, and when you're doing the practice, you're right there in the moment doing it, over the course of time, it's quite natural that changes are brought about. And it addresses a very fundamental question about spiritual practice in general, and meditation in particular, and that is that we're not doing it for no reason at all. Report an error

9:07 Whatever it is, whether you're following Krishnamurti or Zen or Christian contemplative prayer or Buddhism and so forth, we're venturing into these practices because we like to drive some benefit. Maybe suffer less, less dissatisfaction, greater sense of fulfillment, of meaning. Perhaps we're really interested to explore the nature of the mind, the potentials of consciousness and so forth. Report an error

9:28 So as soon as there's some type of an aspiration such that you can give an answer to the question, why are you going here? Why are you following Tibetan Buddhism or Vipassanā or what have you, or even practicing choiceless awareness? Why are you doing this? Oh, because my sense is doing this would be really beneficial. Report an error

9:46 Oh good, how? Do you get all the benefit in the first day and then you just stop? Or if you practice for a year, might you get further benefit? And if so, what kind of benefit? If you practice for a lifetime, what kind of benefit might arise there? And then lo and behold, whether you call it a path or not, You are engaging in practice so that it gradually unfolds and greater and greater benefit arises. And if it stops giving any benefit, if you just find you're just going in circles, nothing's happening, you may as well, why not quit? Report an error

10:14 So I think if we can approach this skillfully like using a very sharp knife, which is very good for cutting all kinds of things that you might not have cut. Likewise, regard this as a sharp knife. This can be very, very useful as like a road map. Of letting you know, after you've developed and your attention skills are developing, what might you expect, not as goals, but when you do get there, then to kind of have the lay of the land, to know, ah, this is what previous travelers, previous journeyers have found. Report an error

10:47 In America there was this Lewis and Clark expedition and the Lewis and Clark, the Oregon Trail, I think it was probably based on their expedition, heading up from the Mississippi River and making all the way to the... To the Pacific Coast. And I think they were the first Anglos to do that overland. And so they carved their own trail and eventually have the 49ers heading out to gold in California, people heading up to farm in Oregon. Report an error

11:10 And so the first ones are really the bushwhackers. They're the ones carving, making the trail. But then we get these wagon trains going. But then it's very similar to that. And of course, clearly they wanted to get to the West Coast. But to know that when you get here, make sure you store up a lot of water, because there's going to be no water for the next 50 or 100 miles. Get here, look out for the natives here a bit hostile, be really nice, and so forth and so on. Report an error

11:34 So it gives you these road markers to know how to follow the journey well, but don't get caught up in how long does it take, the goals and all of that, but more in light of these different metaphors I've given. So as you continue in the practice, And you're developing, you're experiencing a deeper, deeper sense of ease, of stability, of clarity. You continue on. Then, after some time, you may enter into kind of a level or a degree of maturation of your attention skills that we'll call resurgent attention. Report an error

12:09 In an older translation we call it patch-like, you're patching attention, so that's also good. And what is achieved here is swift recovery of distracted attention. Such that for the duration of the session, maybe it's 24 minutes, maybe you've very gladly increased the duration, maybe to half an hour, 35 minutes, something like that. Report an error

12:29 That during the course of your session, in fact, most of the time, you're on the object. You've not succumbed to coarse excitation, not completely forgotten the topic. And when you do lose it, when you completely forget it, that because you're utilizing your faculty of introspection, You swiftly recognize it and swiftly bring it back. So now you can see that's quite a clear distinction between this and the previous stage. Report an error

12:59 And knowing again you're not going to just suddenly achieve that and never fall back, but you'll be moving more into this area so that more and more of your sessions have this as a characteristic. That for the duration you're pretty much on it. And now we see that the power by which you achieve this is mindfulness itself. Report an error

13:18 Mindfulness very much so in the sense of... Retention of recollection of not forgetting and developing that as a skill, a power of the mind, which is clearly going to be useful for all types of human endeavors. Report an error

13:32 So the practice is maturing. What problems persist is that you still forget the object entirely for brief periods. In other words, in terms of attentional imbalances, you are still subject to coarse excitation. Periodically you'll have these brief lapses, like falling off the wagon, so to speak. But then you quickly recognize it and you come back. And now it says, now you really are developing some continuity, since for most of the time you're on the object and they have these brief lapses, three seconds, five seconds, maybe even shorter, and then you're right back again. Report an error

14:06 Now you can say, okay, the type of mental engagement here is interrupted. That is, for the most part you're on it, but there are these little lapses of the flow of your mindfulness. And so it's interrupted. Interrupted by what? Of course, excitation. And now that we've had this brief introduction in these two sessions, these two sessions we just completed, of settling the mind in its natural state, or again another label that's used in the Galukpa tradition, is Samatha focused on the mind. Report an error

14:36 Good title. So now these, as I mentioned before, yesterday, these final two bullet items, all the way through, are now bullet items giving metaphors or description and metaphor that Directly pertain to people who are practicing shamatha following this method, settling the mind into natural state. And that is you'll notice here that like the previous two states, which are really qualitatively very different, the first one no continuity at all, second one a little bit of sporadic continuity, third one pretty significant continuity, that the quality of experience, interestingly enough, they're not using a different noun. Report an error

15:12 It's movement, movement, movement. And now this really highlights a very critical A critical difference between the method of mindfulness of breathing, and in fact most shamatha methods, and this method we're following here, of settling the mind, etc. I'll just call it that for short. And that is, let's go back to my little phrase OCDD, obsessive compulsive delusional disorder. Report an error

15:38 So you recall the obsessive aspect, the thoughts are just obsessively flowing, you can't turn them off. And so they're involuntarily arising. That's the obsessive part. The compulsive part is that we're caught up in them. They don't merely arise, but they catch us. They abduct us. We're carried away by them compulsively. And then the delusional, then we're thinking all of our thoughts are true, which is pretty foolish. And then that is a disorder. Report an error

16:02 Well, in the mindfulness of breathing, in terms of that whole sequence, it's obsessive, it's compulsive, and it's delusional, kind of in a sequence there, from bad to worse. Report an error

16:13 In mindfulness of breathing, we're seeking to nip that in the bud. That is, we're seeking to really subdue, to calm, to quiet, frankly, to stop, even the obsessive flow. So really maintain a continuity of non-conceptual, non-discursive awareness. As soon as one of these obsessive thoughts comes up, you just release it instantly. Report an error

16:39 And then go right back and try to maintain a continuity of non-conceptual awareness. So if you nip the obsessive, then the compulsive doesn't happen and the delusive doesn't happen either. So you nip it right in the bud. So it's a very straightforward technique. Just no thank you. And so it's pretty straightforward. Just release thoughts instantly and go right back to a non-conceptual flow. Report an error

17:01 It's not very nuanced. It's good, straightforward, very kind of honest, forthright kind of practice. This practice here, there's nothing devious about it, but it's much more nuanced. And perhaps you've already gotten a taste of that in these initial two sessions. And that is to see quite specifically we are not, very important, we're not seeking to terminate thoughts. And in terms of the obsessive flow of thoughts, the images, memories, fantasies and so forth, no, we're leaving the valve wide open. Report an error

17:29 No censorship, no editing, not in, if you can, not even the desire. For the thoughts to subside. So this is really different strategically. It's a very different method. That it's completely allowing the thoughts to flow unimpededly. And that includes really nasty thoughts and selfish and belligerent and greedy and neurotic thoughts. Even psychotic thoughts. Anything. Report an error

17:55 In other words, there's just flat out no censorship at all. So this is not judgmental. With respect to the contents of the mind. Now, we won't say judgmental, but we do definitely prefer not to fall into excitation or into laxity. So if you note as you're doing this practice that you're just starting to go into a tailspin of wandering thoughts, well, you prefer not to have that. Report an error

18:18 You exercise good judgment. This is not useful. This is just back to rumination. And so then you intervene and you release, you relax, you release whatever captivated your attention and you come back. So it is definitely preferential with respect to the quality of awareness you're bringing to it. But in terms of what is arising to meet you, there, so this is where it's nuanced, there it's completely non-preferential. Report an error

18:44 You don't even prefer virtuous thoughts over non-virtuous thoughts, helpful or beneficial or unbeneficial. And you don't prefer no thoughts over thoughts, or vice versa. So that's where there's some real nuance there. Report an error

19:01 So in this practice, we are allowing this practice being settling the mind as natural state, we're allowing whatever comes up just to come up without any restraint, no inhibition. So the obsessive flow is allowed to flow as before, as if you were daydreaming. But the compulsive part, that's where we nip it. Report an error

19:24 So it's like another surgical intervention. Instead of cutting it off at obsessive, We get in there with our scalpel and just cut it off at a compulsive level. So the obsessive flow, the blah, blah, blah of the mind is arising. But because we are attending moment by moment to whatever is arising with this unwavering mindfulness, ideally speaking, but attending to it without distraction, which means we're not getting caught up and carried away, which means this is not daydreaming and it's not even free association. Report an error

19:58 As in psychoanalysis. It's not that either. There's nothing wrong with free association. I'm not criticizing, but it's not this practice. Because free association means that from one thought to the next, to the next, there's going to be some grasping. Something that links the first thought. So, in America, mother. Okay, apple pie. Apples. Computers. iPods. Report an error

20:20 Music. Beethoven. Germany. There was some coherence there from mother to Germany. But it was linked by grasping, right? It was all connected by grasping and then going into associations. Well, that's fine, that's free association. That's not this practice. Here we're cutting the cord of association. We're cutting the cord of grasping. So it's Germany and sweet peas, galaxies. Report an error

20:51 There wasn't any connection. Because we're not grasping onto anyone and then going into a network of associations. They're just arising more like fireworks. And that is, if you haven't orchestrated the fireworks, it just seems like, and then, and then, but you don't see any real reason to it, why that one followed this one and that one followed that one. Report an error

21:15 And so the term from physics is stochastic, that they just arise, but without any rhyme or reason, without any order to them. They just arise. They're just spontaneously bursting up there in the space of awareness. And you attend to them moment by moment by moment. Report an error

21:32 And so you allow the obsessive flow to arise but you don't allow these thoughts, memories or even emotions and desires to catch you, to snag you and compulsively draw you into their drama. Report an error

21:46 So the real quintessence of this practice is to cultivate an ongoing stillness of your awareness even while the activities of the mind are in motion. That's really the core. So for that reason, this is all a commentary to this second to last bullet item. In mindfulness of breathing, since you're deliberately seeking to calm, subdue, silence, the obsessive flow of thinking, the activities of the mind, as you're just getting more into more of a flow of just attending to the sensations of the breath, then from stage one to two to three, you're going to find less and less movement. Report an error

22:27 You want to, and you do. You're just saying, no thank you, no thank you, no thank you, releasing them, releasing them. So after a while, kind of the energy behind them does subside and you're just getting just less and less quantity of distracting thoughts, images, future imaginations, past memories and so forth. Report an error

22:45 So the sheer quantity of the emotions or the movements, activities of the mind is subsiding because that's what you want to happen and that's what's effectively happening. In mindfulness of breathing. So those wouldn't be good metaphors. The first one might be a lot of movement. The second one, less movement. The third one, very little movement. Report an error

23:04 And then right on through. But here, relating to settling the mind in its natural state, it's movement, movement, movement. Not suggesting that there's much less. So then you say, well, is anything really happening here? Are you just going around in circles? The obsessive flow may be pretty much the same, but the compulsive engagement, that's going down. Report an error

23:25 And it's because the compulsive engagement is going down that you're able to maintain greater and greater continuity of mindfulness. So that your continuity is greater, your lapses are briefer, succumbing to coarse excitation becomes rarer and rarer, and for briefer and briefer duration. Report an error

23:43 So in that same spirit, when we look at the final bullet item, what's it feel like in terms of metaphor? It's the same metaphor. Cascading a waterfall, cascading a waterfall, cascading a waterfall. All through, there's a lot of transformation. The attention skills are really being developed, but the obsessive flow continues pretty much unabated, and so each time it's given the same metaphor. Report an error

24:07 Whereas, again, now to be a bit redundant, if you're practicing mindfulness of breathing, you'd have a different metaphor for stages two and three and four, because the obsessive flow is really subsiding. So there's three. There's three. And then let's just go off and do four, and then we'll... We'll pause and go back to the other material. Before it's really kind of a benchmark. It's almost like a continental divide. Get there, now it's kind of come down the far slope. Report an error

24:37 It's quite a pivotal, it's a nice accomplishment, it's something quite distinctive. It's called close attention. And you see here, for the duration of your session, and again, it's just a natural evolution to gradually increase the duration of your sessions, because you really want to. Not because you feel you should or cracking the whip of discipline, but as you are getting more and more adept, more and more in the flow of the practice, then you'll just find 24 minutes. Report an error

25:07 I just don't want to stop. Why should I? Okay, 27 minutes, a half an hour. And then that gets really easy and at the end you're still hungry. It's like, whoa, why should I stop? I've got a bit more time. Okay, let's make it 35 minutes. And you continue on. And especially if you're in full-time retreat, that is in full-time practice, then the natural progression that's been How do you say? It's come up countless times over hundreds of years is that gradually the duration of your sessions increases and the number of your sessions decreases. Report an error

25:39 So 24 years ago when this wonderful Tibetan yogi, Genlam Rimba, was leading the one year retreat that I organized, he told people during the first week, his first week of teachings are in that book, Call Me in the Mind. Those are the teachings he gave at the beginning of the retreat. He said, All right, now that you're beginning, you're here full-time to practice shamatha for a whole year. He said, all right, I suggest at the beginning have sessions only 15 minutes, really short, and have 18 of them a day. Report an error

26:06 You do them arithmetic, it's only four and a half hours, it's not that much. But so a lot of short sessions, and so I think for the most part people did that. There were one dozen people who participated in this, all of them stayed for the whole year. And then over the course of the year, what happened to everybody? Report an error

26:24 In varying ways, they didn't all progress evenly or develop in the practice, but then gradually the 18 sessions went to 16 and 14 and 12 and 10 and 8 and 6 and then the duration of the sessions increased. So some people I think they increased only to maybe one or two hours. One fellow was doing, towards the end, was doing four sessions a day of three hours and the person I mentioned earlier was doing just two sessions towards the end of the year. Report an error

26:51 The first one was 11 hours, the second one was 4 hours. And it was very easy for her because she was in a constant state of bliss. When she was on the cushion, she just, why do you want to stop? It was blissful all the way through. So then you might, if you want to be really, how do you say, critical, why did you get up after 11 hours? Why did you make it 12? Report an error

27:13 And there was a very practical reason for that, and that is her bladder was full. She needed to pee. And if you have to pee, you have to pee. And then she'd get a bit hungry, so she would pee, get something to drink, bite to eat, and then go back for another four-hour session. And she was doing that regularly. But the other ones, everybody said it was quite interesting, everybody in their retreat, and there was a lot of variation in their practice and experiences. Report an error

27:38 It wasn't 100 % celebration, everybody had a fantastic time. But it was interesting to note that everybody in the retreat said it was the most meaningful year of their lives. And I do find that interesting. Because some of them, a number of them were practicing mindfulness of breathing for a year. You think, did they have really awful lives before they started? Report an error

28:01 You know, this is as meaningful as it got, watching your breath for a year? You know, or some were focusing on a mental image, some were doing vajrayana practice, I think a couple were doing mindfulness focus on the mind. But of course, what made it meaningful is not the appearances arising to them, it was the transformations they were seeing within. Report an error

28:21 And again, emphasize this, it's not just attention skills. It's not like going for sniper training in the military. So you really can hit that bullseye every single time from 100 meters and 200 meters and wow, my attention skills are really... Well, that's just attention skills. This is much more than attention skills. This is really a maturation of the mind as a whole. And the segue to it, or the avenue to it, is the development of attention. Report an error

28:47 So here, on stage four, Now you may have extended your sessions 45 minutes, maybe an hour, something like that would be ballpark. But now you find something fresh, and that is, for the whole duration of your session, probably 45 minutes an hour, something like that. You no longer completely forget your chosen object. That is, you're free of course excitation. Now, bear in mind, before you fully achieve, and then what does it mean to achieve that? Report an error

29:13 That just means that the great majority of your sessions are characterized in that way. You could still lapse. You could get a cold. You could have some indigestion. Stuff could come up. You could just have a bad day. You could have some news coming in that a loved one died or something like that. And that could throw you back a little bit. And then you rebound. But it's kind of like your center of gravity. When you've achieved stage four, you'll probably be making occasional forays into stage five. Report an error

29:39 You'll have occasional lapses back to stage three or who knows, back to stage two. But kind of like more of a center of gravity. This is where you kind of just, this is just normal. This is where you keep on gravitating back to. This is kind of home. And so then you've achieved stage four. But when you're on stage two, you might have occasional glimpses, you know, taking a little sneak peek up there to stage four and say, oh, that was nice. And then coming back. Report an error

30:03 And then very easily get into the notion, oh, I want to achieve that, I want to achieve that. And that's how you screw up your practice. But this is the quality when you get to stage four. It becomes very normal. And the power by which you achieve that is mindfulness. And now mindfulness is strong. That is, on a course level, your mindfulness is strong enough that you never lose it, even for an instant, for the whole duration of your session. Report an error

30:29 But now what can easily happen here, especially if you've not received detailed instructions on the nine stages, and a lot of people don't, they just start practicing, is that you may experience some degree of complacency concerning your samādhi. and that is if you If you haven't had the big picture, if nobody's given any instructions on these nine stages and all of the further maturation and stabilizing and the development of attention that is yet to come, you might get to this point where you can sit down for, again, half an hour, an hour, what have you, and find, boom, I'm on the target all the time. Report an error

31:02 This is flow. This is flow. Good. This must be a shamatha. This is great. I've achieved shamatha. And then you can read the sound bites of the five jhāna factors that characterize the first jhāna. Say, can I do course investigation? Yep, check. Subtle analysis? Yep, check. Is it blissful? Kinda? Check. Sense of well-being? Report an error

31:22 You betcha, I really like it. Check. Single-pointed attention? Check. Good, I've got the first yana. Except you're not even close, because all you did was look at the sound bites, and you haven't seen the broader context. Can you, oh, by the way, can you sit in samādhi for 24 hours at a stretch? Uh-oh. No check. Report an error

31:41 That would be one of the indicators of achieving the first jhāna. Mindfulness is strong, but because you've kind of gotten over a hump, that if you're no longer harassed by these total lapses of mindfulness, succumbing to course of excitation, you really, you savor, there's definitely a peaceful quality here. Report an error

31:59 Maybe even a bit sublime, but certainly peaceful. Just that flow of session after session, just getting into it. Then it's very easy to think, I've arrived, this is good, I'm a real yogi now, I've achieved samādhi. And then slack off and become a bit complacent. And that actually can be quite harmful. And that is if you just sit there. When I was in that one year retreat, there was one fellow who had done a lot of Zen practice. Report an error

32:27 Very sincere guy, very dedicated. He's like getting up at three or four every morning, meditating for three hours at home before going off to work. And then I think he had an evening session. So this guy was not clowning around. But he wasn't part of our retreat. He just dropped in and spoke with me on one occasion. And he said, due to his very diligent practice, he had gotten to the point where he could, whenever he'd go into meditation, practicing Zen, this probably could have entailed mindfulness of breathing for that matter, that he'd say, I get there and the mind is totally quiet and it remains quiet and Report an error

33:04 nothing happens. I mean, there's no transformation, there's no insight, there's... Just the dead zone. And it's quite reasonable for him to ask, you know, is this worth doing? I'm not seeing any impact on the rest of my life. I'm not seeing any maturation. I'm not seeing any meaningful transformation. I'm just sitting there with a really quiet mind. And that's it. And I think there really is a reason for pragmatism here. Report an error

33:34 If you're not seeing any beneficial effects, you're just sitting there with a blank mind, nothing happening, then you might want to reassess. Why am I spending three or four hours a day doing this, right? So let alone getting caught up in path and achieving this and achieving that. Why are you doing it? You could be doing something else. Report an error

33:50 And so what it sounded to me like was he's achieved this stage, but he hadn't had any instructions. How do you move beyond that? So you're sitting there, you're quiet, you're not perturbed, but nothing's happening. Well, this is where you want to bring in a bit more instruction to say, that's good, but just sitting there, actually, And the Tibetans speak from an enormous amount of experience here. If that's all you get, and I had a sense this fellow had not been damaged by his practice at all, but Tibetans have found, if you get to this stage, and almost like, I'm going to do a cartoon, you get to this point and you go, Report an error

34:30 just settle back, you swaddle back, and kind of like, this is cool. No thoughts, hanging out, hanging out. Don't need introspection much, because I'm not losing the object anymore, so introspection, take it easy, smoke a cigar. I'm hanging out here. What can actually happen, has been reported for centuries, is that this can actually gradually stupefy you. And the very simple reason for that is, introspection isn't really doing anything. Report an error

34:57 You've given it leave of absence. Mindfulness is cruising along. But your intelligence is not being used. And intelligence, like a muscle, if you don't use it, don't use it, lose it, as they say in, you know, physical training, that you can just settle, settle, settle, settle. Into kind of a mire of intellectual atrophy. And it can actually stupefy you. And that would be a path to stupefaction, not a path I think we need to deliberately follow. Report an error

35:30 So therefore, the complacency is something to be aware of, something to guard against. It's now not a time to drop introspection, not to throttle back, but to remain a finer balance, and a finer balance, see, in the spirit of exploration. See, well, what could come further? And so we say, well, good, it's good that you've overcome coarse excitation, but now what you need to be aware of, especially with this prevalence or this inclination towards complacency, is look out for coarse laxity and then medium excitation. Report an error

36:04 So now for the first time, there's a reference to laxity. Before it was excitation, excitation, excitation. Now for the first time. Laxity. Now, could dullness, where you've really lost it, the mind's getting groggy, lethargic, heavy, could that crop up earlier in these stages, one, two, three? The answer is definitely yes. And some people have actually had the kind of the obnoxious combination of feeling agitated and dull at the same time, in which case you probably want to go for a walk, breathe some fresh air, drink something cool, you know, give yourself a break. Report an error

36:35 But now laxity is a technical term. It's a technical term. Now, coarse laxity, It becomes something, now especially, not so much before, but now, okay, be on guard at this. This is how you can move ahead, how you can further develop your attention. So let's go to the next page. What is coarse laxity? And this is where your attention mostly disengages from the object due to insufficient vividness. Report an error

37:02 So with excitation, it's as if your attention is focused here, you want it to be focused here, but excitation goes... It knocks you off target. So if you're my target, it goes bing and it's off to something else. A sensory field, a memory, a fantasy, but bing and I've lost the target. And that's how excitation operates. It throws you off. It's also called toa in Tibetan, dispersion. So you've gone off someplace else. But now, what is your name again? Report an error

37:30 Straight ahead. Report an error

37:34 Somebody is deep in samādhi. Yes, you, in the brown. What is your name? I think you told me. Yes, you. Yes. Ken, you didn't tell me. Thank you, Ken. I'm just using you as my object of samādhi. If you don't mind. And I'm about to do a cartoon. So, distraction you've already seen. Ken is my object of mindfulness and you see I'm really engaged. Report an error

37:53 So there we are eye to eye. Practicing mindfulness on Ken's face. So good. That's excitation. But now here's my cartoon for laxity. I'm going to start out with mindfulness and here goes laxity. Report an error

38:15 Is that good? I never actually wavered. You see, I didn't go here and there. I wasn't gyrating off. The Tibetan term is jingwa, which means sinking. So now my attention is coming out to Ken's face, made contact. I was earlier with Cameron, I think it was. It's coming out, making contact. But then there's kind of an implosion, a floating. Report an error

38:36 Buddha Gosar called it floating, where I've made contact. My eyes are touching, my attention is touching your face. And then I start to float. Report an error

38:47 And it's kind of like that. And so, of course, a loss of clarity, but kind of like hovering. I'm starting to disengage, disengage. And then the slippery slope. Is laxity, just like to dullness, to sleepiness, to... And that's a smooth, slippery slope. And so coarse laxity is there where you're still touching the object. I mean, I'm still aware that Ken is there, but the clarity is gone. Report an error

39:19 I'm holding on by a fingernail, by a thread. But again, it's quite qualitatively different than excitation where I'm just jerked away someplace else, maybe with a lot of vividness, really thinking with great interest about some... You know, something else entirely. So this is coarse laxity. You really don't want to make that a habit. Coarse laxity. And then we'll note that medium excitation, medium excitation is a real issue here. Report an error

39:43 No longer coarse excitation, but now, well, welcome to medium excitation. And we'll see here on page three, medium excitation is a quality such that involuntary thoughts occupy the center of attention, while the meditative object is displaced to the periphery. So you've probably already had that experience in mindfulness of breathing. So you are maintaining some touch, so to speak, a bit of contact. Report an error

40:09 You know whether the breath is going in or out. But what's really engaged your attention is something entirely different. And so it's kind of like humoring the meditative object. I'm giving you enough. How much do you need after all? But I'm busy. I got you. Whatever. Like a babysitter. Report an error

40:28 A teenage girl babysitter who's watching the kids, but in the meantime she's on the phone with her boyfriend. She's giving the kids enough, she feels, but what she's really interested in is the romance. Tell me really. Oh really? Like, wow. Report an error

40:46 What would you do without them? Teenage girls. Of course, human species would disappear if we didn't have teenage girls. Report an error

40:56 So there's medium excitation. Something easy to describe conceptually and then it gets quite interesting when you identify it through your own experience. You say, aha, and this is a labeling. It is a recognition. That was coarse laxity. I heard about it. That's it. And then that was medium excitation. I heard about that. That's it. Report an error

41:14 That's it. So then you know, okay, these are to be identified with introspection. And then the remedies tend to be the same. If it's coarse laxity, again, refresh, arouse your attention, come back in. Medium excitation, it's still the same remedy. Loosen up. But now it's a subtler and subtler loosening, lightening up, releasing and coming back. So this is all getting fine-tuned. And then the type of mental engagement is interrupted. Report an error

41:40 We say interrupted by what? Coarse laxity and medium excitation. No longer interrupted by coarse excitation. But you see, oh, I see. There's still a lot of work to be done here. There's a lot of, you know, further development of attention skills that can be achieved. But the quality, you see it was movement, movement, movement. Report an error

41:59 Now, the quality, what's it feel like? And that is, and again, specifically with respect to settling the mind in its natural state, is a sense of, now we're getting somewhere. Achievement. I'm no longer a rank amateur. My mind is not as much in disarray as dysfunctional it used to be. This is relatively a pretty good state of consciousness. I can maintain my attention. And one of the most promising things here, this is something, a discovery from modern science that I learned about first in 2003 at MIT, and that is if you're developing your attention skills, the stability in particular, developing your mindfulness, or if you're developing that with respect to, say, mindfulness of breathing, which is, as far as I know, it's still not a marketable skill. Report an error

42:47 If you look in the classified ads, the jobs wanted. You probably need somebody who can really follow their breath. Well-paying job, you know, with a lot of, how do you say, upward mobility. I haven't seen that ad yet. So it's not a marketable skill, not one that's really useful in the world as such. And if, and this is an enormously important issue, if the attention skills, the stability, the vividness that you develop by way of mindfulness of breathing, if those skills, very useful skills, if they were confined to that one particular task, well, that would mean, Report an error

43:23 They're very useful as long as you're on the cushion. They give you a respite. It's peaceful, serene, very nice. But if they vanish as soon as you start cooking breakfast or driving to work or doing all of your work during the day, if they're no longer there, if they're just, there's no change, then the significance is really, really limited. Report an error

43:44 It's more like a hobby. But happily, we have found scientifically, and then the Buddhist yogis have known this for centuries. And that is, to a very large degree, attention skills, the term is generalizable. Generalizable, or I like the word transferable. And that is, if you develop your attention skills with respect to something that is kind of intrinsically a meaningless task, I mean, following them in and out breath is not, by nature, a meaningful endeavor. Report an error

44:11 It's not productive. But you are developing your attention skills. Then you can take those same skills and apply them to... Another meaningless task, a video game. But you'll probably be better at the video game. But how about something meaningful, like a meaningful conversation with another person, or art, or composing music, and then everything else, that this is enormously important. Report an error

44:35 And the scientists found this by studying, this was back in 2003, some of their initial discovery here was by studying teenage kids who are very adept at video games, could really develop continuity. They're playing the game for an hour. And if they want to be the champion with the highest score, they have to maintain real continuity. And also with video games, you need a high degree of clarity. You can't dope out, because it's all this fast stimulus response kind of deal. Report an error

45:01 And so they are developing stability and vividness, and the really good ones develop very good stability and vividness. And then they checked out, okay, do you have good stability and vividness for other tasks as well? And it turned out, yeah, they are to a large degree transferable. So then we might ask, well, what are we messing around with meditation when we'd be doing video games? And for the same reason that we're not getting training as a jet fighter pilot. Report an error

45:26 And that is it really taps out your nervous system. I've seen this in my own grandson. Really at the age of, oh, he's seven now, seven in a few days. But even at the age of four, he was getting, I think, literally addicted to the video games on his mom's little iPhone. And he would start really... Freaking out if she took the iPhone out of his hands. Even though while he was playing it, he was really pissed off. He'd be playing it. No, I want it. Report an error

45:55 I want it. I want it. It's very weird. Of course, some people enjoy them. But it is all about contraction. The video games are all about contraction. You really tighten up. You're fierce. It's all goal-oriented. I don't want to get... ah, ah, ah. Report an error

46:13 I don't want to have my spaceship shot down or whatever they do. Happily, I don't venture into that area at all. But it's goal-oriented, it's very ego-driven, it's very effortful and it's exhausting. So that's why you meditate instead of playing video games, in case that was a lingering question. That's the answer. But now the good news is you develop these stressed-out attention skills for video games and you can apply them elsewhere and find other ways to get stressed out. Report an error

46:42 Here, you can develop these same skills from a pool of relaxation, which then at the end of your session, you really absolutely should not feel stressed out. After half an hour, two hours, four hours, if you're practicing well, you do not feel stressed out at all. You feel fresh, stable, calm. And if it's the end of the day, after 12 hours of practice, you feel stable, calm, fresh and sleepy. Report an error

47:05 And then you get a really good night's sleep. You should feel sleepy. Your body needs some sleep. And so, A sense of achievement is now a characteristic and then now for the first time in this practice, settling the mind in its natural state, finally a shift of metaphor. Instead of being so stochastic, chaotic, this gushing of involuntary thoughts, the obsessive flow of thoughts, now we find finally they have subsided somewhat. Report an error

47:33 So now the metaphor is more like a river quickly flowing through a gorge. So still a lot of quantity, a lot of movement, but not so crazy, not so in your face flying all over the place, but more channeled. Report an error

47:49 So, those are for the first four, and maybe just a final comment here. We'll see that through these first four, and this really is kind of a benchmark, like a new base camp, if you're climbing a mountain, Mount Shamatha. That this stage four is really quite a new platform to be from because now you have this. You are free of something for the first time. Free most of the time in your sessions. Report an error

48:14 That is, in most sessions you are free all of the time from course excitation. And you can see then that course excitation was really the primary problem all the way through. And the Buddha had stated... That if you are prone to a lot of conceptual agitation and all of that, mindfulness of breathing is really overall the most effective technique of all the techniques he taught. Report an error

48:36 And so one possible strategy, and I mentioned only one possible strategy, not the right way, and certainly not the right way for everybody, definitely not the right way for everybody, but something one might consider. And that is, if one is interested, has really a spirit of exploration, wanting to know, well, what is the plasticity of attention? How good can it get? Report an error

48:56 Since this question has hardly been asked at all for the last 400 years in Western civilization, maybe it's kind of high time, if one is very keen on exploring these different states of attentional balance, then you might consider, if you are drawn to mindfulness of breathing, considering, well, why not take that raft, that raft, that vehicle of mindfulness of breathing, which is specifically designed to calm compulsive ideation or obsessive ideation, take that raft up to stage four. Report an error

49:26 And then if it still fits, if you still really like it, maybe the acquired sign has arisen by now and you see no reason to change, then don't. Then just carry on and follow your acquired sign and stay the course. But with this degree of stability, where you're no longer being captivated, thrown off, abducted by wandering thoughts and so forth, you can imagine if you'd achieved this stage and then from this platform then ventured into settling the mind in its natural state, it'd be pretty easy. Report an error

49:56 Because you're just not going to be nearly so prone to being carried away. You'll have much more of a kind of a firmer platform to observe. You've still got plenty of material coming up. You've got thoughts coming up like a river quickly flowing through a gorge. So it's not like you have a dearth or a total absence, a vacuum of mental events arising. No, you have plenty to work with. Report an error

50:14 But the vortex around the thoughts, the memories, the emotions and so forth is not so strong because you've developed this strength of mindfulness. That even when emotions come up, desires, fantasies, memories and so forth, since you have that kind of that firm base camp of mindfulness free of course excitation, then the chances of being swept away by whatever comes up is much less. Report an error

50:38 So you're really very well prepared for practicing settling the mind in its natural state. And as I've been teaching this now actually for decades, but now for people in longer retreats for five years, I found... Without any real encouragement from me, I want people to flourish in their practice, to find happiness. That's what I care about, that they suffer less. That's kind of where I stop. And then the rest is all skillful means. Report an error

51:00 So if people, if they're drawn to shamatha, then I'm happy to help them. If they're not drawn to shamatha, I say, fine. You want to do anything else that I can help you with? It doesn't have to be shamatha. And then within shamatha, I just want people to find what's helpful to them. I don't have any, it's not like I'm a stockbroker and I'm deeply invested in one particular stock, like, you know, yay, settling the mind. I don't have any preference. Report an error

51:20 But what I've found, from my own kind of non-preferential perspective, is that many people do find that the mindfulness of breathing is really easy entry. It's not intimidating, it's not daunting, it's not discouraging, you don't feel your failure. You feel you're kind of getting somewhere, you know, that thirst, I mean, is this working? Report an error

51:39 It does get satisfied, and the minds get calmer, that's satisfying, and then gradually they find themselves progressing, stage two, three, four, and then it's happened time and again. And I'm just observing this, like, interesting. And independently, one in Mexico, one in New York, one in Arizona, what have you, is that people, when they get around here, they just start naturally being more interested in and drawn to focusing on the mind rather than the breath. Report an error

52:09 Because as you're getting up to there to stage two, three, four, your introspective ability is definitely improving, which means you're getting clearer and clearer sense. You're paying closer attention to the thoughts, images and so forth coming up so that you can quickly detect the occurrence of excitation. So by the time you're on stage four, your introspection is not bad. Report an error

52:31 That's why you just never succumb to coarse excitation. Because if thought comes up, you recognize it pretty quickly and you're not swept away by it. But then as you have this increasing awareness, clear, greater precision, greater subtlety, This awareness of what is going on in the mind as you're primarily focusing on the breath. After a while, between cinema number one and cinema number two, cinema number two is looking pretty good. Report an error

53:00 It's more interesting, right? And so, one after another, these aspiring yogis has come to me in their practice and said, you know, the mindful breathing is all very well, but I'm just finding myself really drawn to shifting over now. Would that be okay? And the answer is, yeah. Now, I'll end on this point. I think it's time for a break. It is. Report an error

53:20 There's a difference in guidance between great masters of Tibet. One of them is Tsongkhapa. And I take his words very, very seriously. At no point do I actually go out and refute him, because I haven't summoned anything to refute. When he teaches shamatha, he says, look, check out carefully at the beginning, what's the method you'd really like to follow? Report an error

53:40 Find one where, you know, the shoe fits. You're drawn to it, you find it effective, appealing, inspiring. It works. Find it, and then... Go for it. Take that one method and go all the way. Don't pussyfoot around. Try a little bit of this, smorgasborda, this isn't working, like that. You just diffuse your practice and you'll always be second-guessing yourself. I mean, I'm adding a bit of commentary here, but he says find a method that really works for you and just take it all the way through. Report an error

54:08 Don't clutter up your practice by trying to switch all over the place. Very good advice. And then there was one of the early great masters in Tibet named Varotsana. He was a contemporary Padmasambhava, he was Tibetan, great translator, accomplished meditator. He's cited by Tsongkhapa himself as one of the greats, the early greats of Tibetan yogis. Report an error

54:34 Actually, no, Tsongkhapa was citing him. That was it. Tsongkhapa was citing him, Vairotsana, saying, find one method and stick to it. Vairotsana was a contemporary Padmasambhava, who was the greatest Indian yogi to first come into Tibet. And Padmasambhava, when he teaches Samatha, in his text Natural Liberation, which I translated, he gives a whole sequence. He says, when you start out, focus on a stick, a stone or a flower. Report an error

55:01 It's easy. You won't get discouraged. Really coarse. Got it. Okay, now you've done that for a while, done that for a few days? Okay, now, that pretty easy? Good. Now try this one. And he gives, you know, like a mother giving pablum and then food that's more... Harder, harder to digest until the child is eating adult food. Then he says, okay, now try this out, and it's a bit more difficult. And now try this out, and that's a bit more difficult. Report an error

55:27 And try this, he says, do this for some days, and do this for some days. And then finally he comes to the practice, we'll focus in on Sunday and Monday, Shantideva without a sign. And here he just says, just do this until you're finished. Right? But he gives you a whole sequence of kind of from the shallow end to the deep end of the pool, including visualization practice. Report an error

55:45 So he's clearly saying, hey, you know, there can be a very meaningful kind of organic transition from going from coarser practices to subtler practices. And this is not just smorgasbordging all over the place, not being able to make up your mind. It's a very organic sequence of going from a coarser topic to a subtler topic. Report an error

56:03 And so I would say, with all respect for Tsongkhapa, that may be really the best way for some people. This progression of maybe starting out with mindfulness of breathing and then at your leisure segueing over to settling the mind. And then I found, since some of these aspiring yogis have been practicing for years now, at some point just finding, now I just don't want to do anything else. Report an error

56:25 Even attending to the mind. The thoughts this, the thoughts that, like, whatever. You know, been there, done that. This mind, I'm familiar with you, have a nice day. And just wanting to go right into awareness itself. And once they go there and they can do it, This I found repeatedly now, is once people can practice this shamatha without a sign, the practice we'll look into on Sunday and Monday, once people can do that and really feel confidence in it, my experience is they don't want to move. Report an error

56:53 They want to just stay there and just keep on going, deeper and deeper and deeper. It's just so satisfying and so, maybe it's not a good adjective, but starkly simple, bracingly simple, marvelously simple, right into the very nucleus of awareness itself. Very powerful. And once you've tasted that, it's hard to develop a real taste for anything outside. And so that's been a sequence that's been rather common. Report an error

57:21 Having said that, I'm teaching all three of these methods over these six days, and it does happen that some people, as soon as they hear about awareness of awareness, they learn it, they're introduced to it, they practice it, they take to it like a duck takes to water. They just say, poh, do I really have to do the others? Because this is the only one I want to do. From day one. Report an error

57:41 They can do it. They're not befuddled by it, disoriented, and so forth. They're not having any problems. They just go to it and say, this is like crystal clear spring water. This is it. Can I just do this one right now and just continue? The answer is yeah. And some people, especially people with a lot of interest in the mind, the psyche, thoughts, images, the whole array of mental processes, a lot of psychologists, a lot of psychologists introduced to settling the mind in its natural state, say, oh, what more could I want? Report an error

58:09 This is it. This is it for me. This is developing stability and vivis of attention. It is shamatha, but it's so full or pregnant or fertile with insights in the nature of the mind that this is sweet. I'll just take this one. I'm just going to watch this the whole way through and watch your mind dissolve. If you're doing this full time, as the weeks and months go by, just watch the whole mind dissolve into the source from which it arose, which is this substrate consciousness, and see it from start to finish. Report an error

58:42 Like, whoa, that was it. From coarse mind to no more coarse mind. From life to death. From waking to deep sleep. Those are some pretty useful insights. Then you can say, now you've understood the nature of the mind. From the most surface level, all the way down to the substrate consciousness, which is prior to and more fundamental than mind. Report an error

59:05 It's just a subtle continuum of non-human consciousness. The substrate, this bhavaṅga that I mentioned before, it's not human. There's nothing human about it. It's not a human soul that will be born in heaven or deva realms or pure realms. It's not a human soul. It's not human. And not being human, it has no gender either. Report an error

59:24 Your gender is up in your body, of course, and it's in your psyche. There's woman's psyche, man's psyche. There have to be some differences. But the substrate, no. It has no gender. It has no personal history. It has no language. It has no culture. It's not Hispanic or Asian or Anglo. None of the above. It's just... Report an error

59:42 Something pretty primal. And it's not Buddha nature. It's just a continuum of consciousness. It's that out of which the psyche emerges and into which the psyche dissolves back in again. Conditioned by the brain, but the extraordinary hypothesis, and it's, oh, so much hinges on whether this is true or false, that I think this is worth any amount of effort and funding and everything else. Report an error

1:00:03 And that is, here's the assertion, that this substrate consciousness, or in the Pāli tradition, the Bhavaṅga, but from now on we'll just start using the word substrate consciousness. This subtle continuum of consciousness, out of which your dreaming consciousness emerges and then dissolves back into deep sleep. And then out of which emerges your waking consciousness and then you fall deep asleep and it dissolves back into substrate consciousness. Report an error

1:00:25 Or you're walking along and you faint and your mind dissolves into substrate consciousness. Or you're alive and then you die and your psyche dissolves back into substrate consciousness. Report an error

1:00:37 The assertion here is that the substrate consciousness is not contingent upon the brain. It does not arise independence upon the brain. The psyche does. It arises from the substrate consciousness and is heavily conditioned by the brain, configured by the brain. Genetics, brain chemistry, upbringing, personal history, acculturation, all of that, conditioned by many, many things. But when we speak of settling the mind in its natural state, what that means, because I haven't explained it, is you're unconfiguring your mind. Report an error

1:01:10 So that your psyche is dissolving and it's going back into its natural state, which is unconfigured, not yet rising as a human mind, Australian mind, woman's mind, and so forth and so on. You've gone kind of primal. And again, it's not transcendent. It's not mystical. It's not nirvāṇa. It's not anything la-di-da. Report an error

1:01:32 It's just the relative ground state of your psyche. And it can't be that deep. It's just deep sleep. But there it's obscured, achieve shamatha, and it's unobscured. But is that true or not? I mean, it's a big hypothesis. So the implications are just absolutely cosmic. And that is, if it arises simply in dependence upon the brain, then the materialists are right. Then, okay, whatever. Report an error

1:01:57 Mind is a function of the brain. That's what a lot of people believe. But with no corroborating evidence. It's just a widespread belief. The Buddha said, no, that's completely wrong. Thoughts don't emerge from neurons. Chemicals don't have it in them to give rise to emotions and dreams and so forth. Anybody who studies chemistry, exactly where did it come in that chemicals give rise to, even in complex configurations, that chemicals give rise to subjective experience? Report an error

1:02:21 Let alone if you study physics, which I have. There's nothing remotely to suggest that atoms would give rise to happiness. But the Buddha's view is they don't. Atoms, molecules, neurons, complex configurations of neurons do condition the mind, but the mind doesn't emerge from them, it's conditioned by them, and the mind emerges from substrate consciousness, and that's not contingent upon the brain. Report an error

1:02:43 Now that's a hypothesis. One can accept it as a religious belief, in which case then you just shut down the conversation. I just believe because I'm a good Buddhist, and I'm really boring, because I just believe things because of authority. Or you can take it as a hypothesis to be put to the test of experience. Lama Zopa's response to this, I think, was really marvelous. He was asked, is it necessary to believe in reincarnation to be enlightened? Report an error

1:03:08 And he said, no, you need to know it to believe it. I mean, what's the big deal about believing? Okay, that's fine, but belief is belief. But if you've penetrated to the substrate consciousness and then explored it and there are methods to actually put this hypothesis to the test. If it can be determined that the substrate consciousness does not arise independent upon brain function, but precedes brain function and goes on beyond brain function. Report an error

1:03:35 But in the meantime, during that interval that we call human life, your psyche is arising in heavy interdependence upon your brain, genetics, food and so forth and so on. But the mind is not emerging from the brain, but emerging from the substrate consciousness. If that's true, then that, I think that has deeper implications than... Report an error

1:03:57 Or at least as deep as thinking the earth is the center of the universe. Or not. The sun is the center, but oh by the way there are a lot of suns. And now everything is different. Your whole sense of where you are in the cosmos is radically shifted. So if this Buddhist hypothesis, I'll present it like that because I'm not here to indoctrinate anyone, but there's a rational hypothesis, an empirical hypothesis that can be put to the test and has been put to the test thousands of times. Report an error

1:04:25 If that's true, then everything's different. Everything's different. The ramifications are absolutely awesome. So, can that be tested? Or is it just a matter of metaphysics? Oh, gee, some people think this, some people think that. And for that, I like to keep on saying this, the last point. Know that I mean it, and it often doesn't happen. Report an error

1:04:46 That when Copernicus came out with his theory, when Copernicus came out with his mathematical theory, he was a clergyman, by the way, and he just did ordinary stargazing. He made no discoveries. By looking at the stars at all. But he was a very good mathematician. And when he came out with this heliocentric system, mathematical system, that of course the sun is in the center and the planets go around it. Report an error

1:05:10 Well, the intelligentsia of the day looked at his theory, which is very elegant, and then they looked at the Ptolemaic theory that had been around for, what, 1400 years or so, with the earth in the center and then the planets with their epicycles and their eccentric. But it all worked out. It was much more complicated in a way. Report an error

1:05:29 But both systems did account for appearances about just as well. So if you're just trying to see, well, which accounts for the appearances, they both do. So for a good century or so, not quite, well, at least 50 years after Copernicus came out with this theory, this was the whole issue of, well, was Copernicus right, that theory right, or this one? Report an error

1:05:50 It was more of kind of a topic for parlor conversation. And that is, they both account for it, so really the stakes are low. Report an error

1:06:00 And it's kind of like whatever you prefer. If you like the elegance of Copernicus mathematics, go for that. It's one way of saving appearances. If you like Ptolemy, the good old-fashioned way, well, he works as well at Copernicus, so it's a big deal. Until this renegade, Galileo, comes along with his 30-power telescope, directs it to Venus, and direct it with stability and vividness. Report an error

1:06:25 He didn't just take a little peekaboo at Venus, but he observed Venus for a sustained period. And found that Venus displayed something that it absolutely should not, according to Aristotle, according to Ptolemy. And that was, if you look at Venus, there are phases of Venus, like the phases of the moon. Report an error

1:06:44 And if that's the case, Ptolemy's wrong. The first clear, unequivocal, undeniable empirical evidence, Ptolemy's wrong. It may be very good mathematics, it may account for appearances, but it doesn't account for that appearance. And Ptolemy's wrong. And suddenly, that which had become a parlor conversation, Metaphysical issue. Ah, I like this, I like that. Suddenly, you can like this all you like, but it's wrong. The empirical evidence shows it's wrong. End of discussion. Report an error

1:07:11 If you're ignorant, then that's your problem. But if you're knowledgeable, this one's wrong, and this one now is a way to go. And so right now, what Buddhism offers, frankly, is, I think, a very elegant theory. I call it an empirico-centric. Empirico-centric theory, based upon immediate experience of consciousness, contrary to material-centric. Report an error

1:07:31 Which simply assumes matter is primary, brain is primary, and mind can only be a function of the brain. So one's material-centric, one's empirical-centric. Material-centric, nobody's ever found a way to test that one. They simply assume it. The empirical-centric, Buddhists do have a way of testing it, but it's not an easy test. But there are ways of testing it. Report an error

1:07:52 And so I think we're at a junction here between Copernicus and between Galileo in the modern world. Because having a bunch of Tibetan yogis say, oh, we already know it, we already know it, that doesn't wash in a scientific community. You know it, how do we know you know it? How do you know you know it? Report an error

1:08:07 That's not empirical evidence, it doesn't count. Whereas if this could be brought into the public domain with scientific scrutiny, objective evaluation, then I think it would be transforming for human civilization to move something that for the last 5,000 years has been in the realm of metaphysics for most of humanity and say, thank you, your time is up. Report an error

1:08:27 Now we're moving this into the realm of empirical knowledge that is replicable, that's public, that can be ascertained and decide the issue one way or another. So Shantideva turns out to be kind of a big deal because Shantideva provides you access to that substrate consciousness and be able to run experiments there that can be very revealing. Report an error

1:08:47 I hope I've struck in you, at least shared with you my sense of adventure, that this is not Buddhism beats science, this is not science versus religion, this is what is true and how can we find out. Rather than simply believing. And what the materialists have is a whole bunch of beliefs that they can't corroborate. And religious people on the whole have a whole bunch of beliefs that they can't corroborate. Report an error

1:09:08 Including a bunch of Buddhist beliefs that religious Buddhist believers believe in, like Christians believe in their doctrine and Muslims believe in their doctrine. And then there's just no conversation because it's belief versus belief and you're wrong, no, no you're wrong, uh-uh, you're wrong, uh-uh, uh-uh. Report an error

1:09:22 And that's the nature of the conversation. Uh-uh. I got bored with that a long time ago. You know, evolution versus creationism and blah, blah, blah. It just bores me to tears because it's belief versus belief. Whereas here, okay, whatever your beliefs are, let's just check it out the old-fashioned way by carefully investigating the phenomena we're trying to understand, nature of consciousness. Report an error

1:09:43 Where does it come from? What's its role in nature? It's a big deal. So, let's take a break, come back at 20 minutes past the hour. We'll go right back to the practice. 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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