← B. Alan Wallace

Shamatha Retreat with Alan Wallace 2012 (part 33)

B. Alan Wallace · 2012 · 1 h 3 min · Vajrayana Institute via Internet Archive

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  • 0:27

    I've said it many times, but it's very easy to forget. And that is the object of mindfulness for the settling the mind in its natural state is the space of the mind. And whatever mental events arise within that space. So none of the five physical senses, but anything that arises in the domains, that's more objective things like thoughts, images, more subjective impulses, desires, emotions, but it's not only the events, and that's why the word identifying is so important, it's not only the events that arise in the space of the mind, but also the space of the mind itself. So it's the space of the mind and whatever arises within it.

  • 4:36

    To place this practice in the context of the very fundamental teachings of Buddhism, the Buddha, some of you who have studied Buddhism may know that when the Buddha was analyzing the elements of experience, this was done in various ways. Five skandhas, five psychophysiological aggregates. 12 sense bases, 18 elements. And the 18 elements is where I'd like to focus there, but just on one of them. The 18 elements are just three sets of six, and that is six modes of consciousness, five sensory and one mental.

  • 7:24

    All phenomena throughout the entire universe are illuminated by primordial consciousness. They are expressions of or displays of pristine awareness. So we're going ultimate here into the deepest, the greatest depths of Buddhism altogether and Dzogchen. But just coming back here. To this simple shamatha practice, then what we're attending to is the Dhamma Datu on a relative level. And that's just that domain of mental experience in which mental events arise.

  • 9:24

    It's just rest there. The awareness holding its own ground, doing that practice in utter simplicity. Now we're going to go back to simplicity. Sustain your mindfulness without distraction, without grasping. Focus on the space of the mind and its contents. That's it. Monitor with introspection. You got it. That's all there is to it. And then the rest all happens to you. Everything that's interesting all happens to you.

  • 25:16

    But in this practice, it's really crucial actually that you don't quietly prefer and just kind of, you know, nudge them off. As if I'm going to do this faster, I'm going to silence them, nobody will notice. Buzz off, buzz off. As if that's going to make it go faster. Because that very inclination, that preference, that slight nudging them out, is itself an expression of grasping. Now this is not just an ideological injunction, like thou shalt not.

0:09 For whatever shamatha practice you're engaging in, it's very important to have a very clear idea of what your object of mindfulness is. If that's vague, the whole practice will be vague. The linchpin. So for this practice, there's really only one right answer and it's kind of important to memorize it and then you know what your target is. Report an error

0:27 I've said it many times, but it's very easy to forget. And that is the object of mindfulness for the settling the mind in its natural state is the space of the mind. And whatever mental events arise within that space. So none of the five physical senses, but anything that arises in the domains, that's more objective things like thoughts, images, more subjective impulses, desires, emotions, but it's not only the events, and that's why the word identifying is so important, it's not only the events that arise in the space of the mind, but also the space of the mind itself. Report an error

1:01 So it's the space of the mind and whatever arises within it. Which is to say, on occasion, if you simply, as closely as you look, you cannot detect any events arising in the space of the mind, you still have something to attend to. You don't just kind of throttle back and say, well, when something comes up, then I'll pay attention. Or just kind of go into a trance-like mode of just non-conceptuality, just sitting there not knowing anything. Report an error

1:26 It's really imperative to maintain a flow of knowing. If that's interrupted, the flow of the practice is interrupted, you're getting into a bad habit. Report an error

1:36 So this means that we need to be equally attentive to the space of the mind as well as to the events arising in that space. So for the next two sessions, I'll give some, we won't need a lot, but a little bit of guidance in these two sessions to highlight, to shine a brighter light, that is a light of our own awareness, on the space of the mind itself. Report an error

1:57 So in the first session, we'll start as normal, as usual, but then I will... I will say, just to give you the sneak preview again, to now especially pay attention to the intervals between thoughts. And as you do so, see what you see. Are you now just gazing at nothing? Do you simply have no object whatsoever? Is there nothing to attend to? Or is the space of the mind something you can attend to, which does have qualities, and which then you can continue to know? Report an error

2:27 So the first session will be focusing especially on the intervals between thoughts. And then in the second session, to give away the plot, would be to focus on that space of the mind, to highlight it or take special interest in it, not only during the intervals, but at all times. And that is the space of the mind is always present. It is that space out of which thoughts emerge, in which they are present, into which they dissolve. The space of the mind is always there. Report an error

2:55 So, those will be the two sessions. To become, just bring a more nuance, more texture, more richness to the practice, which when all is said and done, and I have said and done a lot, when all is said and done, is very simple. I mean, just attend to the space of the mind without distraction, without grasping. That really sums it up. But we want to make sure we don't miss anything. So the space of the mind is also something to attend to. Report an error

3:17 And not only thoughts, not only thoughts, but also emotions, not only emotions, but also space of the mind. Not only during intervals, but it's always there. Okay, good. Now, find a comfortable posture. Away we go. Report an error

· · ·

4:36 To place this practice in the context of the very fundamental teachings of Buddhism, the Buddha, some of you who have studied Buddhism may know that when the Buddha was analyzing the elements of experience, this was done in various ways. Five skandhas, five psychophysiological aggregates. 12 sense bases, 18 elements. And the 18 elements is where I'd like to focus there, but just on one of them. The 18 elements are just three sets of six, and that is six modes of consciousness, five sensory and one mental. Report an error

5:12 And then there are six faculties or bases, independence upon which these six modes of perception or consciousness arise. So the visual faculty and so forth. And then there's the six domains of experience. So the visual domain, the auditory and so forth. So three times six. Report an error

5:29 And among those six domains of experience, we have the visual domain, the auditory domain, the olfactory and so forth. And when it comes to the domain of mental events, and by the way, each of these domains is called the datu, D-H-A-T-U, datu. When it comes to the domain of mental events, That domain is called Dharma Datu. And Dharma here just means phenomena, but specifically phenomena that are apprehended by the mind, more specifically mental phenomena. Report an error

6:01 And so if we should ask, well, okay, in terms of old-fashioned terminology, what are we attending to in this practice? We're attending to the Dharma Datu. Now, not ultimate, not ultimate reality. So when we get into Mahāyāna Buddhism, Dharma Datu is often presented as the absolute space of phenomena, as emptiness, ultimate reality. Report an error

6:20 But here, among the 18 Dattus, the 18 elements or domains, this is simply the domain of mental experience. But it's called Dharma Dattu. It's called by the same name. And so we find this happens repeatedly. The term Rikpa, Tibetan, Rikpa. Well, it means pristine awareness, the deepest dimension, the ultimate dimension of awareness, equivalent to the innate mind of clear light. Report an error

6:42 But in Buddhist psychology, exactly the same term is used, Rikpa. It just means awareness, just ordinary old awareness. So something that we're immediately aware of. And so this happens repeatedly. We have this term alaya, substrate, the space of the mind. You're familiar with this now. In some context, alaya is used synonymously with emptiness, shunyata, emptiness. And in some treatises on Madhyamaka view or middle wave view, it is said that all phenomena emerge from emptiness and dissolve back into emptiness. Report an error

7:10 Just as in other treatises it said, like in the Dzogchen tradition, it said all phenomena rise from Dhammadatu. And dissolve back into Dhamma Datu. But speaking now at an ultimate level. I mean the entire universe is arising from and dissolving back into Dhamma Datu. All phenomena throughout the entire universe are illuminated by primordial consciousness. They are expressions of or displays of pristine awareness. Report an error

7:34 So we're going ultimate here into the deepest, the greatest depths of Buddhism altogether and Dzogchen. But just coming back here. To this simple shamatha practice, then what we're attending to is the Dhamma Datu on a relative level. And that's just that domain of mental experience in which mental events arise. Report an error

7:54 And then what we're attending with is just our minds. But then in this process, the Dhamma Datu, so to speak, gets... The layers of conceptual projection, labeling, categorization, judgments and all of that, just like peeling off layers of dead skin, it just kind of gets de-layered, de-layered, de-layered, so you peel off all the layers of conceptual junk, I mean just conceptual projections on the Dharmadhatu and what you're left with is the alaya, the substrate. Report an error

8:25 And how do you gain a direct immediate experience of the substrate with the substrate consciousness? So with the coarse mind, you can apprehend Dharmadhatu, but the coarse mind dissolves into the substrate consciousness and the Dharmadhatu dissolves into the Alaya and then you have the consciousness of the Alaya or the Alaya Vijnana and Vijnana means consciousness. Report an error

8:48 So that's a little bit of broader context for this. So that's pretty much the nature of this practice. As I said, it doesn't evolve, it doesn't change, the method doesn't shift as you go deeper and deeper into it. And again, it's... It's so simple. It's very much a matter of not getting caught up in notions of progress, path and so forth when you're doing the practice. Because it's more like allowing shamatha to happen to you rather than getting in their practice, rolling up your sleeves and trying to do something to generate some stability and generate some greater vividness and generate some more and do this and kind of bushwhack your way through. Report an error

9:24 It's just rest there. The awareness holding its own ground, doing that practice in utter simplicity. Now we're going to go back to simplicity. Sustain your mindfulness without distraction, without grasping. Focus on the space of the mind and its contents. That's it. Monitor with introspection. You got it. That's all there is to it. And then the rest all happens to you. Everything that's interesting all happens to you. Report an error

9:46 Eruptions of emotions and memories and weird, all kinds of weird stuff happening in the body. Dredging your psyche, dredging your whole nervous system, your prāṇa system. But it's all happening to you. But all you do as you stay the course, as you continue in the practice, is just keep on doing what you are doing. Report an error

10:04 And that is just being present, being present. And whatever comes up, just let it be. Let it be. If you think it's a medical condition, check it out. If it is, treat it. If it's not, let it be and come right back. And then just let shamatha rise up to meet you. And so shamatha is discovered. Shamatha rises up and comes to you rather than your hastening after it. That's pretty well the practice. And so now let's go back to page two, if you would like to follow the notes. Report an error

10:34 As I mentioned within the context of Dzogchen when teaching this practice, often the nine stages are not even mentioned. And I think that's again because it's so easy to get hung up on them. On the one hand they can be very useful, but they can also be so unuseful. If you just start getting into that I want to acquire mode and all that business, you know about it. Then they just become counterproductive. So since this is more of a discovery approach rather than a developmental approach of generating a Buddha image and then reworking with it, I mean really like a potter shaping a pot or an artist, you are now a mental imagery artist and your palette is the space of the mind. Report an error

11:16 And your creation is that mental image you are generating, crafting, shaping, sustaining, polishing, enlivening and so forth. That's very developmental. And in that context, the nine stages can be very, very helpful. I mean, I think they're true no matter what. But in this one, which is so discovery, then just bearing in mind those five phases. Report an error

11:37 And that is distinguishing between movement and stillness. And then having that sense, that immediate experience of stillness simultaneous. Stillness of your awareness simultaneous with the movement of the mind. But bearing in mind that's not something you achieve one day, it's not a stage, it's not way up there, it's something you can experience pretty much at any time, maybe during the first session. Report an error

11:59 Just have that sense on occasion, the awareness being still and thoughts coming and going. That's it. That's that first mode of mindfulness. Single-pointed mindfulness. And then on occasion it just may get really smooth and really effortless. And it seems like the practice is kind of taking over. The mindfulness is kind of flowing effortlessly. Report an error

12:17 And that may happen for five seconds at a time and ten seconds at a time. In which case that's the second mode of mindfulness. And it just gets more and more flowing, more and more effortless. In which case we speak of manifest mindfulness. And then just continue to sustain manifest mindfulness. That's all there is to it. Report an error

12:36 Just continue to see manifest mindfulness until you lose it. Until your senses have completely imploded, all the activities of the mind have dissolved into the substrate. And your mind has dissolved into the substrate consciousness, at which point you lose the mindfulness associated with the coarse mind. And you can imagine this, at least conceptually, you can anticipate a little bit. Report an error

12:56 You can imagine all of your senses imploding as if you're falling asleep, all of the attention coming into the mental domain. Within the mental domain, you're focusing there on the space of the mind, the Dharma Datu, and all the events coming up. But then there are fewer and fewer and fewer and fewer mental events until there aren't any, in which it's very much as if you're in a sensory deprivation tank, but you're vividly, luminously aware. Report an error

13:21 And what are you aware of? Not much. Because all that you were attending to has all vanished. And now it's just the space of the mind, but that's not much. And so now we can say, okay, you've lost mindfulness because you're not bearing anything in mind, you're not retaining anything, recollecting anything. But then as you're just sitting there, just again, imagine being in a sensory deprivation tank, but a perfect one. Report an error

13:44 So here's a little thought experiment. Imagine being in a perfect sensory deprivation tank. So you get into it, slip into the saline solution, it's exactly your body temperature, they close the lid, and now it's pitch black, no visual impressions at all. And it's perfectly soundproof. Report an error

14:02 And of course, there's no smells and no tastes. And this being a perfect sensory deprivation tank, you can't feel your body at all. I mean, nothing. And then, this being a thought experiment, we invite Merlin in, we invite the magician in, he waves his wand over the tank, and in so doing, he gets all of your mental activities to just go down, just go quiet. Report an error

14:21 He just silences you with his wand. So all the thoughts, memories, images, all the activities, the javana, Merlin comes in and just does it to you. Report an error

14:32 And your mind has gone totally quiet. But, I should say, just before you got into the center deprivation tank, you just are down three cappuccinos all in a row. Report an error

14:44 So no question about being drowsy. So you've got a real buzz on. You're really clear. You're really high-pitched. So you're very vivid, very attentive, very bright. Report an error

14:57 But now you've got no material. So you can say, well, in that situation, you've kind of just lost your mindfulness. What exactly are you supposed to remember? But if you just imagine this, since you're so vividly awake and there's just nothing happening to you, then you are bound to be aware of the one thing that is going on, Report an error

15:24 consciousness. You're not dead. You're not unconscious. There's still something there. And even if you can't say anything, because remember your javan have gone flat, so you can't say, wow, I'm conscious. No, the words are not happening. The thoughts are not happening. But even without the thoughts happening, there's still an immediate, indubitable knowing. It's not over. Report an error

15:50 Consciousness is still happening. And you may take an interest in that consciousness, in that sheer immediate experience, unmediated experience of being conscious. And that would be your approximation of slipping into the substrate consciousness. So every Dharma center should have a sensory deprivation tank. And Merlin, to make sure your mind goes quiet. Report an error

16:10 So I mentioned before, now we're back to the nine stages. Oh yeah, and then of course after the third phase of mindfulness, of absence of mindfulness, then comes the naturally luminous, and then you get the luminosity and the mindfulness of the substrate consciousness itself. And then you've achieved shamatha. You're all set. So now we come back to the nine stages, because I do believe they are useful. Many people have found them useful, so it's not conjecture, it's a fact. Report an error

16:36 And I mentioned that mindfulness of breathing for a number of people may be the most effective way, we're looking at sheer efficiency, of having your attention mature through these first four stages up to the fourth, and in so doing counteract or remedy, coarse excitation. I mentioned that's also like a continental divide, getting up there to the point that now you can maintain a continuous flow of mindfulness without coarse excitation. Report an error

17:06 Invitation to complacency. But if you're aware that you've not yet arrived, this is not it, this is not the final stage of Samādhi. In fact, it's really rather far away from it. Then you will continue to apply introspection and really attend very closely and look for the occurrence of coarse laxity, to which you're very prone, as well as medium excitation, which you may not have noticed all that much before because you're so dealing with coarse excitation. Report an error

17:33 So as you continue in the practice, remedying, Now fine-tuning, like fine-tuning a sitar, just finer and finer tuning, relaxing, relaxing when you see the loosening up, releasing when you see medium excitation coming in and coarse laxity coming in, then tightening up a bit, arousing, applying a bit more effort. Report an error

17:52 So that fine-tuning, just like, again, tuning a stringed instrument. Then in that process, then, sooner or later, you're bound to achieve the fifth, the fifth attentional stage. Report an error

18:03 This is called tamed attention. And as I mentioned, if you've already achieved the fourth stage, that would really be a really solid or strong platform, foundation for venturing into the practice of settling the mind in its natural state. If you're attending to the acquired sign, that's fine. You can continue on. That would be perfect. But you may also be drawn to the settling the mind, especially at this point, when you already have such a head start. Report an error

18:30 You could really do it well from the beginning, having achieved stage four. And so when you've achieved stage five, what is experienced now, what you achieve is a sense of satisfaction in samādhi. Report an error

18:43 Satisfaction. I mean, you really, a deeper sense, a deeper sense that you are really no longer a rank novice. You've really, your mind is matured. The mind is exceptionally balanced. And you do take satisfaction in that. And the power by which you achieve this fifth stage, so that you're able to recognize and remedy, Coarse laxity and medium excitation is now for the first time you're really bringing the power of your introspection, the faculty of introspection to bear. And that's what's doing this fine-tuning work that is enabling you to detect subtler and subtler deviations from attentional balance. Report an error

19:22 But what's interesting, really fascinating about this fifth stage is it seems to be fraught, well it is fraught with, a type of ambivalence. Because we see on the one hand you're clearly taking satisfaction and with good reason. Report an error

19:35 On the one hand, On the other hand, problems persist include some resistances to samādhi. So you're both taking satisfaction and you're feeling resistance too. And there may have been other endeavors in your life where you feel, yes, taking satisfaction and yet some going and coming, some ambivalence about it. Report an error

19:53 And that does characterize this fifth stage. We'll see why in a minute. So some resistance, some resistance, as if almost is there something to dread, something that could be... Problematic, something you don't really want to encounter and you're right next to it and kind of think, do I really want to go over the waterfall? Am I really ready to go there yet? Report an error

20:13 Or, well, it's really nice being here, but am I really ready to go further? So, some ambivalence. Attentional imbalances, we see now here that coarse laxity is overcome. Report an error

20:27 And this was really what you were tending to. Because you see in both stage four and five, medium excitation is present in both. So not a whole lot of progress there, but for the first time you're really addressing the issue of laxity and the criterion for moving from stage 4 to stage 5 is really essentially moving beyond coarse laxity to a subtler degree of laxity, which is called, of course, medium laxity. Report an error

20:52 We'll see that on the next page. And in medium laxity the object appears, but with not much vividness. So it's not that you've mostly disengaged from the object, as in that cartoon I gave earlier with Ken. The object does appear, you are engaged with it, but an utterly subjective and non-quantitative kind of statement, but with not much vividness. Report an error

21:19 And so now this is an inside job, and that is, well, what does not much vividness mean? Well, it means that you've experienced better within your own experience. You've experienced times when this medium laxity wasn't there and it was quite sharp, quite clear, vivid, high resolution. And then other occasions when this medium laxity is occurring, it's not as good as it was. Report an error

21:45 So it's inside. If you're outside, you wouldn't know what they're talking about. You wouldn't know what the parameters are. But within the system, there are occasions when you feel, oh, the clarity is really good now. And then... You're not disengaged, it's not coarse laxity, but it's not as good as it was. And that's it. Not much vividness. So it's moving there. It's very subjective, very inside. Report an error

22:08 It's something you can determine only within your own experience. Couldn't do it just from outside or couldn't do it just by thinking about it. And medium excitation persists. So you're really working here. And this is a kind of a famous transition. It's been famous for at least 1,500 years. Report an error

22:25 Tsongkhapa cites Chandragomen, I think 5th century, 7th century, a long time ago. In his own, this is an Indian yogi by the name of Chandragomen and a very famous poet. But he was practicing shamatha. He got to stage 4 and then he was transitioning to stage 5. And he's been quoted for however many hundreds of years, his statement. Report an error

22:45 And that is, and it was an expression of frustration or exasperation. He's saying now, having achieved stage 4, now when I... He knows that he needs to overcome coarse laxity and that means greater effort. So tighten it up a little bit. But he says when I tighten it up, when I arouse or raise to a higher pitch, my attention, that destabilizes my attention. Report an error

23:08 So then I have to throttle back, loosen up a bit. But when I loosen up, then I'm falling back into coarse laxity. And oh, crud. Okay, back we go. Oh, I'm going into coarse excitation again. Bummer. Okay. And so he just found he couldn't win either way. It was either too much this way, too much that way. And so it was just a purely experiential expression of frustration. Report an error

23:33 And what he had to do was, of course, just tune it finer. And so just a notch up, just a notch back. It's all internal. But this is a transition, a very significant one, to go from stage four to stage five. And the type of engagement, mental engagement here, continues to be interrupted. Now interrupted by what? Report an error

23:56 Interrupted by, because you're still prone to them, interrupted by medium excitation and medium laxity. They're still there. Medium, medium, so it's even. They're still there, so you're being peppered. The flow of your mindfulness is being peppered, interrupted by a bit of medium excitation here and then it's a bit of medium laxity there. Report an error

24:22 So that's what's interrupting a flow of really impeccable, perfectly balanced attention. And the quality of experience, it says it's achievement, and that's just what it was in the last stage, a feeling, you know, you've really gotten somewhere, this is a better quality of awareness, something to be savored, enjoyed, appreciated. Report an error

24:41 So that's pretty much the same. And then once again the metaphor, and now this is again the metaphor pertaining to this practice that we've been doing today and yesterday. The metaphor for the involuntary thoughts is once again like a river quickly flowing through a gorge. So you'll see that the The sheer volume of the thoughts, the obsessive muscle flow of thinking, is not subsiding quickly, which it does. Report an error

25:06 It subsides much more quickly if you're practicing mindfulness of breathing or focusing on a mental image because you're specifically releasing them. You're going out of your way to be gone, be gone. But in this practice, it's really crucial actually that you don't quietly prefer and just kind of, you know, nudge them off. Report an error

25:25 As if I'm going to do this faster, I'm going to silence them, nobody will notice. Buzz off, buzz off. As if that's going to make it go faster. Because that very inclination, that preference, that slight nudging them out, is itself an expression of grasping. Now this is not just an ideological injunction, like thou shalt not. Report an error

25:46 It's something very simple and absolutely transparent. And that is, if you're still preferring, I wish there were few thoughts. I wish there were still few thoughts. Then you are continuing to activate and reinforce your coarse mind. Which means then your coarse mind is not going to be dissolving because you're still putting it to use. Report an error

26:07 So this is a practice of as much as you can relaxing, releasing, releasing your coarse mind. And that's all the activities of the coarse mind. Thinking, preferring, hoping, fearing, desiring, not desiring and so forth. And just letting be. In a word, and this is a very useful word, Report an error

26:28 Aspiration in this practice is to view the space of your mind and all the contents that arise within it from the perspective of substrate consciousness. Report an error

26:39 That's the aspiration. That's what you're trying to approximate. You can't just do it, but you can approximate it. So you'll see, okay, what does substrate consciousness do, or what does the coarse mind do that the substrate consciousness doesn't do? Talk, commentary, conceptualize, hope, fear. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The coarse mind does that, the substrate consciousness doesn't. The substrate consciousness is non-conceptual, it's luminous and it's blissful. Report an error

27:11 And so you try to release anything that's not that and just be present. That doesn't mean you can immediately be blissful or immediately be extremely luminous and clear and bright, but it does mean you can be utterly simple. And then, almost like being up on the ninth floor and then pushing the elevator button, And have the elevator come up from the ground floor up to where you are. You just sit there having pushed the button. Okay, I'm just resting in the present moment like the kestrel kiting into the wind. Report an error

27:40 I just hit the button and then let your substrate consciousness rise up to meet you. And then engulf you. But as long as you're continuing to activate your coarse mind, then you'll be warding off, tampering down the substrate consciousness. Because that's what's left over when your coarse mind has gone dormant. Of course, the crucial point is stay vivid, stay lucid. Report an error

28:04 Otherwise you're just falling asleep. So that's the metaphor. You're not even preferring for those involuntary thoughts to subside. You're simply allowing them to subside. But this is also once again where we see that there are really two aspects to this training. And they're not different methods. They're just two different ways of looking, understanding or appreciating exactly this one extremely simple practice. And one I'll call epistemic and the other one I'll call pragmatic. Report an error

28:33 The epistemic is that by Engaging in this practice, especially when you do it hour after hour, day, month, week, month after month, this is epistemic in the sense that you are really learning a lot about your mind, about how thoughts emerge and emotions and desires and how the mind has its own antibodies built in. Report an error

28:58 That is, if you simply attend to mental afflictions and neurotic thoughts and so forth, you simply attend to them. And keeping the wound clean, coming back to that metaphor, then these mental afflictions, neurotic thoughts, ruminations, resentments, cravings, anxieties and so forth, if you can simply sustain that quality of mindfulness without distracting, without grasping, these resolve themselves. Report an error

29:22 They unravel themselves. They're rang dole in Tibetan. They release themselves. So you don't need to bring in the big guns, okay? Hell, bring in the cavalry. You know, bring in the troops. You don't need any troops. The antibodies are in the system itself. And that is, these will release, release, liberate themselves, as long as you don't do anything to prevent it. Report an error

29:47 Well, you prevent it by getting in there with grasping and preferences and hopes and fears and all that junk, all the forms of grasping. If you can simply not do that, then you're learning an awful lot about your mind in this process. It's epistemic. It's a knowing process. Of knowing how your mind functions on a coarse level, observing how the mind heals itself, balances, unravels itself, how it gradually simplifies, how the volume of thought subsides, subsides, subsides, until eventually you see how the whole coarse mind altogether dissolves into the substrate consciousness and almost like a black hole drawing all the light from around into the black hole, sucking it in. Report an error

30:32 Your awareness is going into the black hole of the substrate and it's drawing in all the light that would otherwise go out to the five physical senses. So you're getting an implosion. The black hole is kind of a cool analogy. None of the light goes out because all of the light is bottled inside the substrate, the substrate consciousness. So you're watching all of this happen. Report an error

30:50 This is not a matter of indoctrination. It's just the opposite. You're just watching it happen. So one criticism I've seen, I think it's done by people who think a lot about meditation but don't practice it. When it comes to the hypothesis from Buddhism and other traditions, that meditation can actually be a viable way to gain discoveries and knowledge, replicable knowledge, about the nature of the mind. Report an error

31:14 I mean, that's a novel thought. But that proposal, that introspection, rigorously trained introspection, could actually be very useful in understanding the mind, is almost entirely absent in all of modern psychology, which is pretty bizarre. Report an error

31:33 So, well, it sounds kind of foolish. I mean, give me a break. I mean, why wouldn't observing it help you to understand it? Why do you want to confine yourself to questionnaires, behavior and brain studies? I mean, why not look at it? Like, what's wrong with that? And so, very intelligent people come up with reasons to justify what they don't want to look at. And one of the reasons is that if you're meditating, then all you'll be aware of will be meditative states. Report an error

32:00 Bliss and love and serenity and light and angels. Really nice things, spiritual things. If you meditate, you'll just be aware of spiritual things, but that won't give you any insight into the grotty, dark channels, the dark side, neuroses and psychoses and all that kind of stuff, because you'll be a spiritual person. Report an error

32:18 And your meditation will only illuminate spiritual things. Well, if one has never meditated, one might entertain that thought. Report an error

32:29 Anybody who's meditated even for an hour or two knows you're getting all kinds of junk floating to the surface of the mind. But let alone doing it for an hour or two, do this for 5,000 hours, 10 hours a day. No one in his right mind would even dream of there even being one shred of truth in that. You are getting a very detailed tour of your mind from the coarsest levels and it's not just bad things that come up. Faith will come up, devotion comes up, unconditional love may spring up out of nowhere, compassion, sadness, bliss, ecstasy, neurotic fear, incredible confidence, Report an error

33:06 Tremendous self-confidence and pride in the sense that you're the lowest of the lotus, a total loser. Everything is going to come up. So this really is a guided tour. If you'd like to know your mind from the top to the bottom, then this is a practice that lends itself to that. So that's the epistemic part, that you really do come to know your mind. Report an error

33:27 So know thyself. Well, this may not tell you a whole lot about your body, although frankly in the same course of that, let's say that's 5,000 hours, You're going to be experiencing all kinds of stuff happening in your body. Somatic stuff, really weird stuff, blissful stuff, miserable stuff, all kinds of stuff will be catalyzed from the energetic level out to tissue. Report an error

33:48 So you'll actually get to know a lot about your body from a first-person perspective as well. So that's that. That's stage five. But we see it's almost, when we get that ambivalence, that's what I find most interesting about this phase. You're really taking satisfaction in it. That would imply you really want to do it a lot. Let's go for it. Let's do 11 hours, 12, 13 hours a day. You have a battery-operated Dharma teacher ready to talk again. Report an error

34:20 So there's the fifth stage. And you're seeing there may be something like a premonition, like, you know, it's a nice warm sunny day and you're just kind of wondering, but what are those, what's that, red in the morning shepherd's warning, right? What if you wake up in the dawn and you see the horizon is really, really red. You may feel this is a really pretty day, but what's coming? Hurricanes, tornadoes, typhoon, what's that, what's that? Report an error

34:46 So enjoying the day, but a little bit of, hmm, what's coming up? What's coming up is stage six. The notorious, the infamous stage six. It's quite a rollercoaster ride for many people. And you look at it, and anybody who just thought about meditation and didn't practice it would not see this coming. There's just no way you'd see this one coming. And so it's called pacified attention. That's a nice label. Well, when you've achieved this, when you've achieved this, so there you are, then that earlier resistance that we noted previously, that's gone. Report an error

35:21 You overcome the resistance to training the attention. The power by which you achieve this, once again, introspection. You're really sharpening that blade now, the introspection. But now it looks like out of the blue. But problems persist. Well, what were they on stage five? Problems persist. Some resistance to samādhi. That sounds pretty tame. Problems that persist. Report an error

35:44 Desire. And this could be lust, craving, teeth chattering, you know, desire. Depression. Lethargy. Drowsiness. One may wonder, where on earth is that coming from? This must be a typo. That should be on stage one. Or maybe stage two. You're doing really well here. You're at stage six or only nine stages. You're two-thirds of the way through. Why should you have sexual craving or craving for other kinds of things coming up? Report an error

36:11 Why depression? What do you have to be depressed about? Lethargy. I thought you were overcoming medium laxity here. Where's lethargy coming? Drowsiness. Where is this? I thought your sharpness was really good. And so what you're doing here, this has been confirmed even by a lot of people I've been preaching, let alone the last couple of millennium or two. Report an error

36:32 Is that when you're getting into that stage to five to six, this is the point where your samādhi is getting really good. It's really getting very good. And like a good sharp knife, this enables you to dredge deeper and deeper and deeper. Which means you're bringing to the surface of consciousness impulses that really were repressed or suppressed. Report an error

36:54 They just weren't coming up. Because we're so activated on the course levels of the mind. We're dealing with day-to-day events, getting the kids off to school, paying our bills, paying the taxes, going to work, getting home, getting the car serviced. Just all the stuff that occupies the mind of ordinary life and hopefully in a not very traumatic life. We're not living in a war zone and so forth. Report an error

37:15 So hopefully relatively peaceful in that context. And we're really engaged with a pretty tame set. But here you're really deeply stepping out of your ordinary routine, whatever it was, pleasant or unpleasant, traumatic or very serene. You're stepping out. You're stepping out of the world. You're stepping into a very deep trough. And the trough is your own mind. And you look down the well and it says, whoa, at the bottom is the substrate consciousness. Report an error

37:45 But what's between here and there? And this is, now we're looking at, real Freud would have a heyday with this. And now you're looking at subconscious impulses that you may never be aware of, or very rarely, or they come up just once in a while and really surprise you. Well now you're just getting it, you're just getting them gushing up. Report an error

38:03 And that is just really, you can have, there's a much longer list, we don't have time to look at it, but you'll see it listed verbatim in Attention Revolution. And it's from Dujun Lingva's text, the Vajra Essence. It's about two and a half pages of these nyam, these anomalous, Transient psychosomatic experiences that are catalyzed by authentic meditation. But some of it, you just have to say, must be a transient form of psychosis. Report an error

38:32 I mean, really weird stuff. One of them, for example, is just when you're in, and it's especially referring to this state, when you come out of meditation and you see other people talking, just talking or laughing, and immediately locking onto the notion, they're laughing at me. They're ridiculing me. Why are they doing that? Report an error

38:51 I can't stand it. And then kind of freaking out. In other words, just absolutely unreality-based paranoia that will come up. But it's not to say this practice will make you paranoid. It's saying this practice will, on earth, catalyze paranoid tendencies and they'll come up. And if, when you see them coming up, paranoia or deep sadness or grief or aberrations in your sensory perceptions, emotions of a wide variety, Just really intense mental afflictions coming up, just hatred coming up, like a rabid lion, like where did you come from? This kind of stuff. Report an error

39:30 When it's coming up, if you can just do the practice as you were doing a week before and two weeks before, that is whatever is coming up. It would be like taking a little grand round through a psychosis ward in a mental institute. And say, whoa, whoa, whoa. Just keep on moving. Just keep on moving right on through. Don't stay here. Don't make this your home. Don't enter into cognitive fusion with these psychoses that are rising up and saying, hello, you want to dance? Report an error

40:00 I'll keep you busy for a while. You know, whatever's coming up, you just hold that stillness, that clarity, that looseness. Don't go freaking out. Don't contract. Don't cringe. And it's so similar. So extremely similar. To having a lucid dream. And in dream yoga, which now takes lucid dreaming and really pushes it into a whole contemplative discipline, it's stated that when you take lucid dreaming and dream yoga very seriously as a real discipline, you're practicing daytime dream yoga and nighttime dream yoga. Report an error

40:35 I taught that here and a book that I've authored will come out in about a month or so on lucid dreaming and dream yoga and the whole interface between the modern and ancient disciplines. So there's my pitch for the book. But moving on, when you do this really seriously, you're really like in a retreat setting and you're really embracing, taking full time, the practice of dream yoga, which is daytime and nighttime. Report an error

40:58 And that's all I'll say about it. When you do that and you start having more lucid dreams and more lucid dreams and you start working with the lucid dreams, practicing the transformation of the dreams, emanation of the dreams, really working with them like a potter getting his hands in the clay and shaping and shaping the dream like a potter shapes a pot. Report an error

41:15 When you do that, When you do that, if you're a Freudian or Jungian therapist, you might think, oh man, that's going to really stir up the hornet's nest. That's exactly what happens. You're right there in this domain that's a direct expression from your subconscious or coming out of the substrate consciousness. And then you're tinkering with it. Report an error

41:38 You're shifting it, changing it, and so forth. Well, that's just going to stir up the hornet's nest beneath. You're going to have a lot more stuff coming out. So just practicing dream yoga big time, daytime, nighttime practice, that's going to stir up some really awful dreams. Real stinkers. That which you dread most. If you sat for five minutes and say, okay, in all of existence, what would you most not want to encounter? Report an error

42:07 What is your worst fear that may I never in all lifetimes never encounter this? That's what you'll experience. You'll get it. It's just a matter of time. You'll get it. It'll come up. After all, why not? It's a dream. Anything can come up. And if you dread it, it will come up. Right? Not in daytime. I mean, if it's, you know, 50-foot alligators, well, no. I think that's too long. That's longer than they get. So you won't encounter that on planet Earth. Report an error

42:34 But in the dream, oh yeah, why not? What's wrong? 30-foot alligator, 50-foot alligator, what's the problem? You know, 1,000-foot alligator. There's no problem. There's no limits there. If you can imagine it, it can happen. And if you can imagine something you incredibly dread, well, it'll happen. And so what do you do if you're practicing dream yoga? And I'm mentioning this not just to go off on a tangent, it's a strong parallel. Report an error

42:53 If you're practicing dream yoga and that very practice itself, as you're transforming, shifting and so forth, the contents of the dream, and then you get some of these just horrendous nightmares coming up, then the practice is to stay lucid. Report an error

43:08 The practice is to stay lucid, whatever it is. 50-foot alligators, whatever is your most... Terrifying image or event, what have you. Just stay lucid and recognize whatever is coming up. This is a play of rainbows. These are mirages. These are reflectance in the mirror. It doesn't matter whether it's grotesque or beautiful. I mean, it's fluffy. There's no substance to it. Report an error

43:33 There's nothing possible there. I mean, do you want to be attacked by 100 rainbows or one rainbow? Which is worse if you're going to be attacked by rainbows? They're rainbows. I mean, come give me a break. There's nothing that can harm you there. And if you're lucid, you're recognizing that the whole dreamscape consists of nothing other than empty appearances. Just appearances arising from the space of your own substrate, space of your mind. Report an error

43:55 There's absolutely nothing there that has even one iota of an ability to harm you from its own side. Any more than a mirage could. Or a Godzilla appearing on a movie screen. That's a pretty scary dude, Godzilla. But exactly what is a projection on a movie screen? How is that going to harm you? But I know that when, in the 1950s, about 1956 or 57, I was a little kid, I was six or seven, and when the first televisions were coming out, and I remember one of the earliest things I ever watched on television, it was some friend's house, they had Godzilla. Report an error

44:35 They were really early on. It was Godzilla. And I saw this giant lizard and all these Japanese people freaking out and being crunched and chummed. I thought that was pretty scary, even though it was flat. It's a television. When it's going to come out of the television and start eating up the neighborhood. Report an error

44:55 And the point there is that if you grasp onto it, if you reify it, then you can be harmed. You can be harmed. You can be terrified. You can experience physical pain in a dream. Report an error

45:07 Clearly, you can be punched, beaten, stabbed. You can really hurt in a dream if you're grasping onto your own body, reifying your body, reifying that which... Could ostensibly harm your body, then it does. And likewise, of course, psychologically, you can be terrified in the dream. You can be insulted. Report an error

45:23 You can be tremendously insulted or affronted in the dream. Somebody attacking you, ridiculing you, making fun of you in the midst of thousands of people, and they're all laughing in their heads off at you, thinking you're the biggest dope in the universe. And you can just cringe and feel horrible in a dream, if and only if you grasp onto it. Report an error

45:44 If you don't, none of this has any power at all. So as with a lucid dream, that's what you have to do here. You have to stay lucid. Stay lucid all the way through. Whatever's coming up, stay lucid. Recognize mental events as mental events as in a lucid dream. You recognize a dream as a dream. It has no existence other than that. Therefore, it's empty and it has no ability to harm you whatsoever. Report an error

46:06 So you're sitting there and you attend to these people who are laughing, chuckling, maybe glancing your way once in a while. And this is in real life, so-called real life. And they're just having a really good time. And they just happen to notice that you're in the vicinity. And they glance over. And then they're going back to their comic conversation. Report an error

46:25 People do that. But you see the paranoia coming up. That they're ridiculing you, they're laughing at you. Maybe they're plotting to actually kill you. That's what they're so happy about. Because they're thinking of the grisly ways they're going to torture you to death. And they're just giggling their heads off at that. Report an error

46:41 You see these ridiculous notions coming up. This is in the waking state. And you recognize, ah, these are paranoid thoughts. And you don't even need to give the commentary. You just recognize, these are paranoid thoughts. And there they come. And there they go. And you let them be. You don't try to block them. Report an error

46:59 You don't go for therapy. You don't go for medication. You don't try to antidote them in any way. Because that's just activating the course mind all over again. And then backsliding. You see the paranoid thoughts coming up, the depression coming up, the fear coming up, whatever it is, just let it be. And let it unravel, resolve itself. Report an error

47:19 So this one's a big one. A lot of people linger on stage six. That transition from five to six, they linger there. Because obviously this is a lot easier to say than to do. Oh, just be present. Terror comes up. Oh yeah, just be present with the terror. That's easy to say. So that's why this is really quite unexpected. But again, if you understand from the outset that this whole practice of settling the mind in its natural state is really, it's not only epistemic and learning about these subconscious impulses that are now becoming conscious. Report an error

47:51 In other words, you are dredging your subconscious and there is no leaden barrier between your conscious mind and your subconscious. This is exactly a way to venture into an expedition into your subconscious and have that which was previously unconscious, Become conscious and then being present with it all the way through and by so doing, finding this is not only epistemic, this is therapeutic. But it's not therapeutic by being ingenious, clever and bringing in a whole arsenal of different remedies, all the things you've learned from Buddhism or psychoanalysis or what have you. Report an error

48:25 It's therapeutic because as you're just present there with that one response to all and that is just be present with it without distraction or grasping, then you're observing your mind heal itself. In that way it's therapeutic. So it's simultaneously epistemic and therapeutic. It's wisdom and skillful means, hand in hand, in union. Report an error

48:46 It's quite extraordinary. And the practice is so simple. It's breathtakingly simple. So those are the problems that persist. And the attentional imbalances, now we see, okay, medium laxity, no real progress there. But now what you're working on is remedying medium excitation and overcoming it. So no big progress on medium laxity, but there's progress in the moving from the medium to subtle excitation, which means you're calming the mind. Report an error

49:16 And again, if we were liking the mind to a pool of water, as it calms and it becomes more transparent and you can see deeper down into it. There's a lot of waves on the surface. You just see the waves. And it's excitation that is the waves. And as you calm, then you can see deeper and deeper and deeper into the mind. Report an error

49:34 And then you see these subconscious impulses. Which are no longer subconscious. So, medium excitation to overcome. You're left with subtle excitation. You see this at the bottom. Subtle excitation. In this case, the meditative object remains at the center of attention. You really are on target. But not 100%. Because the noise, the junk, the distracting thoughts. Report an error

49:59 These involuntary thoughts emerge at the periphery of attention. So they're more like gnats buzzing around your head while you're really focused and very clearly focused, but still there's some noise, almost like static on a radio station where you're getting the station loud and clear, but you get this annoying little kind of hum or crackling or whatever from some other, just the noise, the static. Report an error

50:19 Well, it's like that. Or maybe you're actually picking up a little bit of invasion from another channel. So it's a music, you're listening to classical music, but you're getting some news station. And you can really hear the music clearly, but then you're seeing this news commentary going on and telling, hmm, I'm not really 100 % on channel, on target yet. Report an error

50:37 So that's subtle excitation. And then quite simply, the type of engagement is still interrupted by medium laxity, subtle excitation. The quality of experience is one of achievement. Still, you know you've really gotten somewhere. You're no longer an amateur, no longer a novice. But now we see with this movement from medium to subtle excitation. Report an error

50:58 The mind is just not so agitated. That now the sheer volume of involuntary thoughts does subside. We see another metaphor kicking in. And instead of the river quickly flowing through a gorge, like a mountain gorge with a lot of white water, now it's more like a river down in the valley. A river slowly flowing through a valley. Report an error

51:17 And so there may still be a lot of content, a lot of volume of water passing through, but it doesn't have that white water. It doesn't have that agitation, the froth. It's just more of a current, a quiet current flowing through. And so, again, it's just a metaphor. When you're there, then you can see whether that metaphor well characterizes your own experience or not. Report an error

51:38 So that's stage six. That one's really a big one. A lot of people get there and they wind up lingering there, dealing with one thing after another that comes up. And keep on coming back to the practice. If you get stuck here or earlier, and that is something comes up, Maybe one has been traumatized as a child for whatever reason or had just some really rough experience, call it trauma then. That or something else, whatever it may be, but if something is dredged up and it comes up like a killer whale and just engulfs you where you know what you're supposed to do and you just can't do it because whenever this emotion, this memory or whatever comes up, it's just so much bigger than you are. Report an error

52:24 That regardless of your intellectual understanding, yeah, just stay the course, be mindful, being mindful inside the shark's mouth, yes, I'm supposed to avoid the teeth. If you find you just can't do it, just can't do it, then that's a time, if you were in traditional Tibet, that would be a time in between sessions to go to all the other practices. Report an error

52:46 Taking refuge, bodhicitta, four immeasurables, guru yoga, spending time with your Dharma friends. Getting counsel from your Lama, developing bodhicitta, doing Vajrasattva practice. Bring in your heavy guns. Bring in the other methods to really help you through that. Because bear in mind, even in Tibet now, I don't know if there are any psychotherapists in Tibet right now. Report an error

53:09 I don't know. There may be a few in Lhasa. But for its whole history, they just didn't have psychotherapists or psychoanalytists or psychiatrists. And they had no meds. Report an error

53:19 They had true herbal compounds to try to... Balance out your prāṇa system, that's it. And so they didn't have the benefits of modern, say, biomedicine or psychiatry, but they were drawn this very strong arsenal of methods to help you get through those, and they worked pretty well for 1,200 years. That said, we are now living in the 21st century, and if you do this practice very seriously, and you do have some really heavy waters coming up, some really strong turbulence. Report an error

53:50 Really engulfing types of emotions and so forth. And if there is a psychotherapist, a psychiatrist that you know who understands your practice, understands meditation, doesn't think you're crazy because you are meditating, or that you're meditating eight hours a day, some people might think, I think you need serious therapy. Report an error

54:07 If you're going into solitude and meditating eight hours a day, come, we'll fix you. We'll start out with some major anti-psychotic drugs. Report an error

54:17 There are a number of psychiatrists. We even have one in Phuket. We have a psychiatrist in Phuket. We always have a resident psychotherapist who has a few decades of experience under his or her belt. We'll have one again this spring. But there's also a psychiatrist in Phuket, speaks fluent English. He's Thai, he's Buddhist, speaks fluent English, and he knows what we're doing, thinks it's cool. Report an error

54:39 And so if it should happen that somebody in our retreat... Really has some very strong, very troubling emotions coming up and needs to talk not only with the therapist but maybe needs a bit of symptom relief from some drug, some medication. Then that's a possibility too. This person will talk to you and perhaps prescribe something to help you get over the rough part. So I think we're in the 21st century. Report an error

55:04 We should make use of all the wisdom that's available to us. And so should something come up where you can't, you simply find you cannot do the practice. Because you're being carried away by these emotions or what have you, then get some outside help. If you have a very trusted therapist, psychiatrist, a Lama or an array of other practices, then ease off a bit. Report an error

55:26 Don't beat yourself up and spend some time in the other practices. In other words, be like a very loving parent and help yourself get through it. And when you are, it's no longer engulfing you so much, then maybe you can come back to the practice and then carry on. So that's stage six. We'll finish stage seven and then take a break. Report an error

55:49 Yeah, let's do it. Time is running. Okay, fully pacified. I think we can be pretty quick here. And we see the first one is the really good news. And that is you achieve stage seven. And now those exactly those problems, the desire, depression, lethargy and so forth, those are pacified. Pacification of attachment, craving, desire, melancholy, lethargy. Report an error

56:08 You've moved through it. It was a phase, a deep dredging. And in fact, The major dredging is now finished. If you're on stage 7, you're sailing in pretty smooth waters. It's a nice place to be. You'll like it. Report an error

56:24 The power by which you achieve this is not just introspection, which of course you continue to hone, but how do you get the gumption, the strength, the drive to move through all that dredging process? Because some of it is bound to be really pretty unpleasant. And it's going to be by the power of enthusiasm. Report an error

56:42 Your dedication to the practice, your taking delight in the practice, your zeal, your enthusiasm, that's what gets you through. So it's not enough just to be tenacious. There needs to be some joy in the practice. And that comes by, first of all, having no resistance to it anymore. Saying, hey, this is so important, this is so valuable, let's just go for it. Report an error

57:01 And then rouse your enthusiasm and then plunge forward in this expedition into the depths of your own mind. The problems that persist, now we'll see once again there's symmetry. In the last one it was medium laxity, subtle excitation. Now we're back to symmetry. And that is, it's subtle laxity and subtle excitation. Report an error

57:24 But the problems that persist are there, but they are swiftly rectified. And that is, the sharpness of your introspection is so good, you become so adept, so accomplished, so familiar with the practice, that even when these subtle laxity, subtle excitation arise, you are so expert now. You can do just the fine tuning needed, relaxing just enough to overcome subtle excitation, arousing just enough that you overcome subtle laxity. Report an error

57:52 And subtle laxity here, as we'll see down in the notes before, in this the object does appear vividly, but the attention is slightly slack. Tsongkhapa says of all of the attentional imbalances, this is the most difficult to recognize. Report an error

58:09 Number one, you can't imagine it. If you're not there, you won't imagine it. It's much more subtle than you can imagine. So it's very difficult to discern. But you'll see it within a relative context. And that is, in stage seven there, you will experience times when the mind is just radiantly clear, extremely sharp, in one session. Report an error

58:28 And then in another session, if you didn't have the context, you'd say, this is a great session. But you just had a better one. And I'd say, oh, this is a really good session. The clarity is really good. But it's not as good as it was. And therefore we're going to call that subtle laxity. It's not the razor sharp that it could be. And then you tweak it up a little bit. Report an error

58:50 So, that's how you... And then likewise with the subtle excitation. Just that slight loosening up, loosening up. So here it becomes really obvious why the flame of effort on that winding path, the flame of effort here is really small. Very, very small. Because it's... Just like a musician, when you're getting under really fine tuning of a stringing instrument, that doesn't take much muscle power. It takes a lot of finesse, but not much muscle. So seven, so subtle laxity, excitation are still, still occur. Report an error

59:26 Type of mental engagement is still interrupted. But interrupted in a very marginal way, just by this subtle laxity, subtle excitation. And I want to emphasize too, when you're on stage 6, you'll have these forays into stage 7. That will be inspiring. And then you'll fall back to stage 6, maybe throttle right back to stage 5. And then find your center of mass once again at stage 6 and say, yeah, well, this is kind of home. But let's keep on moving here and then getting more forays into 7 until eventually just kind of your center of gravity. Report an error

59:53 Kind of just moves over to seven and that's where you are with occasionally backsliding into six and occasional sneak previews over into eight. So again there's nothing regimental or rigid or absolutely linear about this. It's more like a puck that slides back and forth but gradually moves across the ice. So the type of mental engagement is still interrupted but very modestly. Report an error

1:00:14 The quality of experience now is familiarity. It's beyond achievement. You're really, you're getting expert. This is getting really smooth. And yet, even with all of that, you see that in the previous case, you're still subject to subtle excitation. You're still subject to subtle excitation. So the sheer volume of thoughts, no big difference. Still likened to a river slowly flowing through a valley. Report an error

1:00:42 But that's a nice stage. In that stage, you will probably find an occasion. That your senses are gradually imploding, even with your eyes open, it kind of goes blank. You're not going blind. As soon as you want to direct your attention to the visual, there it is. But also sound kind of wavering and wavering out. Report an error

1:00:59 The very sense of being incorporated, corporeal, your somatic experiences of being embodied, fading in, fading out. You're kind of on the cusp there of the senses kind of imploding and then coming back again and imploding as you're getting more and more focused, more and more channeled into. The purely mental domain. So for those three stages, five, six, seven, settling the mind in its natural state could be a really, really, really good method, especially for those phases. Report an error

1:01:28 Because it is so subtle and you'll be aware, you'll have like with the increasingly subtle thoughts, images, desires, emotions coming up, you'll be able to continue to sharpen, to hone the blade of mindfulness and of introspection. Because you're just getting subtler and subtler events that you'll be attending to as events that were previously so brief you didn't notice them. Therefore they're in the subconscious. Report an error

1:01:54 Or so subtle you didn't notice them. And therefore in the subconscious. Well now both the temporal and the qualitative acuity of your awareness, your ability to discern briefer and briefer and briefer events, and your ability to discern subtler and subtler murmurings of mental activity, it's getting so sharp. Report an error

1:02:16 The practice rises up to meet you. It keeps on presenting you with subtle and subtle and subtle events to which you can continue to sharpen the knife of your mindfulness and introspection. And that's what is really moving you along the path of these nine stages. So, that's that. Good, let's take a break. It's now, let's say, ten past. Let's come back at twenty-five minutes past the hour. We'll go back and do some more 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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