Shamatha Retreat with Alan Wallace 2012 (part 38)

0:04 In terms of that first method, very briefly explained, but completely explained in that one short paragraph, Padmasambhava says, try doing that for one day. And we're doing it for one session, so we're definitely collapsing things down a bit and moving along to these other phases of the practice, which we'll do in this next session. Report an error in the passage at 0:04 Highlight the passage at 0:04

0:25 One difference that I've added to these traditional teachings is suggesting that you may conjoin this oscillation, And then the inversion of awareness with the in and out flow of the breath, which is kind of a natural thing to do. But it also entails multitasking, which means you're attending to the breath, you come back to awareness, you're going back and forth, which then you're cluttering the practice. Report an error in the passage at 0:25 Highlight the passage at 0:25

0:46 So why would I introduce clutter into a nice, very crisp method that Padma Tsongkhapa taught 1,200 years ago? And the only reason for doing it is that I've taught it for quite a long time. And sometimes people, if I don't make any reference to the breath, I just say, do this. They just get disoriented. They just can't do it at all. And then they're sitting there being frustrated. And so I thought, okay, it's a little leg up, a little intro. Report an error in the passage at 0:46 Highlight the passage at 0:46

1:12 Since you're probably aware of your breath anyway, then why not acknowledge that? And then like that pacekeeper in that skiff, whatever they call it, you know, the rowboats, that just keeps time. It kind of, just the flow of the breath, kind of just gives you a rhythm. So you have something to engage with, because we're dropping you in mid-air here. Report an error in the passage at 1:12 Highlight the passage at 1:12

1:31 There's nothing to hold on to at all, not even thoughts. It just dropped in mid-air. And so to give you a little at the initial state, just something to hold on to. Okay, in-breath, out-breath. At least that's something, that's familiar, that's comfortable, like a little, you know, I can call home, you know. That can be helpful at the beginning. Report an error in the passage at 1:31 Highlight the passage at 1:31

1:50 On the other hand, even from this very session right now, if you find it just more clutters the mind, not helpful, then don't do it. Then just set your own rhythm, because we're going to go right back to an oscillation again. A releasing and a version. And if you find that a conjoinant with the breath is not helpful, it can clutters and just throw it out. It's something I added anyway. Report an error in the passage at 1:50 Highlight the passage at 1:50

2:09 And only as a preliminary exercise to get into the flow of the meditation. So we'll return to this oscillation with very little more preamble, but a tiny bit more. And that is, we're going to be performing what I call a cognoscopy. And it's drawn from... Drawn from Padmasambhava, and a cognoscopy, a probe into the very nature of cognition itself. Report an error in the passage at 2:09 Highlight the passage at 2:09

2:36 And what we'll be looking at here is that when we're releasing, we're just releasing, but this time as we're probing inwards, we'll be probing in to see what is your sense, your lived actual experience sense of being the agent who is releasing and inverting your awareness. I mean, I'm inviting you to do this. Obviously, I can't make you do it. I wouldn't want to make anybody do it. But this is the instruction. If you decide you'd like to follow it, and then you release and invert your awareness, release and invert, then presumably there's an agent who's doing that. Report an error in the passage at 2:36 Highlight the passage at 2:36

3:10 It's not me. You're not a puppet. I'm not a puppeteer. So the agent is where you are. And so what is your lived sense, your experience of being the agent who's in charge of your mind? Doing a simple function here, releasing and inverting. So we're not asking a philosophical question to send you into kind of a tailspin of philosophical conjecture, which maybe has its use, but not here. This is just more, insofar as you have a sense, I'm doing something with my mind, what is the referent of that I, that agent, who is releasing and inverting the attention? Report an error in the passage at 3:10 Highlight the passage at 3:10

3:46 Just what is it? So we're just venturing in, we're just planting these one seed, one seed, moving right along. So don't worry about success or failure. Just see what you see. And don't think it's a quiz. There's a right answer here. The right answer is just see what you see. So with no further preamble, please find a comfortable position. Report an error in the passage at 3:46 Highlight the passage at 3:46

4:05 Physical discomfort here is just a nuisance as usual. And we'll proceed on. Report an error in the passage at 4:05 Highlight the passage at 4:05

· · · silence, 1 minute

5:07 Is today Easter or is that next Sunday? Next Sunday. So these are premature, premature eggs. I like chocolate. Oh yeah. Report an error in the passage at 5:07 Highlight the passage at 5:07

5:21 We all know the phrase, who do you think you are? You think you are. And we so often conflate what we think with reality. It happens all the time. I think psychosis is largely a matter of conflating the projections, the activities, the cognitive hyperactivity with what's actually going on and then getting into a lot of trouble. Report an error in the passage at 5:21 Highlight the passage at 5:21

5:40 Here, the question is not who do you think you are, but what is your actual lived sense? What's the immediate impression, experience of being who you are as the agent? Let's read just one paragraph and then we'll see what time we have in ten minutes for a discussion. Report an error in the passage at 5:40 Highlight the passage at 5:40

5:56 Our time is short. So second paragraph on page 12, just one paragraph we'll read. Then position your body like before. And he said earlier, not quoted here, sitting upright on a comfortable cushion. But if you want to lie down, go for it. Then he says, but now, especially when you're sitting upright, cast your gaze downwards. Report an error in the passage at 5:56 Highlight the passage at 5:56

6:16 Again, this has a kind of a grounding quality to do that. It helps to stabilize, to overcome the excitation of the mind. Cast your gaze downwards. Gently release your mind. Almost as if you're saying, okay mind, you can go now. And without having anything on which to meditate, gently release both your body and mind into the natural state. Report an error in the passage at 6:16 Highlight the passage at 6:16

6:36 So just this profound sense of release. I think this is especially timely in the modern world with all of our frenzied activity. Having nothing on which to meditate and without any modification or adulteration, place your attention simply without wavering. In its own natural state, its natural limpidity, its own character, just as it is. In other words, just rest in awareness. Remain in clarity and rest the mind so that it is loose and free. Report an error in the passage at 6:36 Highlight the passage at 6:36

7:08 To my mind, it's so refreshing to hear such words. But now we set up the oscillation. Once you've gotten it really loose, now let's venture into an oscillation again. Alternate between observing who is concentrating inwardly and who is releasing. So what is the agent? That's doing that. If it is the mind, if you think the mind's doing it, then ask, what is that very agent that releases the mind and concentrates the mind? Report an error in the passage at 7:08 Highlight the passage at 7:08

7:37 And steadily observe yourself. There's the cognoscopy, there's the retraction, the withdrawal into your very sense, immediate experience of the sense of being who you are as an individual, the agent, then release again. By so doing, fine stability will arise, and you may even identify awareness. Do that too for one day. So he's saying this simple practice, and again, you see, it really is not complicated. Report an error in the passage at 7:37 Highlight the passage at 7:37

8:05 Of course, that doesn't mean easy, it just means it's not complicated. With this simple exercise, this may naturally antidote or remedy excitation, that is, fine stability. And in the first paragraph, that can overcome laxity. So it's a very, very simple way to remedy the two fundamental imbalances of attention. First overcoming laxity, and now with this downward, this gravitation, this total sense of release, then stability, very fine stability may arise. Report an error in the passage at 8:05 Highlight the passage at 8:05

8:35 And for the very gifted, for the prodigies, in simply doing this shamatha practice, they may actually break right through the coarse mind. And tap into the substrate consciousness and break through that right into the nature of pristine awareness. When he says you may even identify awareness, he's referring to rikpa, pristine awareness. Report an error in the passage at 8:35 Highlight the passage at 8:35

8:54 So this may actually be sufficient for some people who are very ripe, with very little dust on the eye, so to speak. This could be enough to penetrate right to the ground awareness. He said do that for one day. So, that's that. So I see that the written questions are piling up, but I'd like to go... We do have... Report an error in the passage at 8:54 Highlight the passage at 8:54

9:16 Yeah, we have a few minutes. That's good. So, how did it go? Is it total bewilderment, disorientation, being utterly exasperated and frustrated? Or some people actually find this one is more accessible than the last one. And some people say, I like this one better flat out than everything that's done before. Why didn't you teach this first? Report an error in the passage at 9:16 Highlight the passage at 9:16

9:34 Why are we messing around with those other things? And it's just, that's the way it is. It's natural proclivity. So there it is. Comments, insights, experiences, anything you'd like to share, not only questions. What happened? We just did three sessions. Yes, we'll start with you. Questions coming? Report an error in the passage at 9:34 Highlight the passage at 9:34

9:53 My name is Sally. Sally, yes, thank you. I wondered if you could comment on that point of awareness and awareness and that agent, self-agency. Would you consider that a metaphysical crossroads? A metaphysical? Crossroads. Crossroads. Where some people see the path. Guided by a higher power. Or the other direction where it's more focused on self and development, enlightenment. Report an error in the passage at 9:53 Highlight the passage at 9:53

10:23 These are both matters of conceptualization. And contemplatives have been doing this for thousands of years. So go into an experience, whether they're Christian contemplatives. And just by the way, in my book Mind and the Balance, you'll find mindfulness of breathing, settling the mind in its natural state and awareness of awareness in the Christian tradition. Report an error in the passage at 10:23 Highlight the passage at 10:23

10:40 From good sources, not heretics, but really solid sources. So this is not something uniquely Buddhist. You'll find something similar in the Vedanta tradition. If you look in the Taoist tradition, I think you'll find something similar there, and so forth. So I do find something quite universal about this. And what has happened for millennia is that contemplatives, theistic and non-theistic, East and West and so forth, will venture into this kind of just straight, unmediated experience, trying to leave all their doctrines and theories and so forth behind and just... Report an error in the passage at 10:40 Highlight the passage at 10:40

11:09 Probing in, kind of a cognoscopy as I said. But then when they come out and they're engaging with their brethren, then of course they're going to probably try to make sense of it, articulate it, teach it, and that means they're back into a framework. If they're Christians, it's going to be a Christian framework. If it's Taoist, Buddhist, Hindu and so forth, and they will be speaking out of that. And so then we see this... Report an error in the passage at 11:09 Highlight the passage at 11:09

11:31 This going back and forth between an experience that may actually transcend concepts. And all of these traditions I just mentioned, also the Sufi, the Kabbalah, all of them say the deepest experiences transcend thought. They all say that. And then they try to talk about it. Not because they're foolish, but they're trying to find metaphors, words, instructions and so forth to lead people to that experience. Report an error in the passage at 11:31 Highlight the passage at 11:31

11:53 And of course they're going to use their familiar framework, the Muslim face if they're Sufis and so forth. What is very interesting here, So the answer is yes, it is kind of a crossroads, but it's not so much a crossroads of methodology when you're actually doing it, but a crossroads of making sense of it and trying to make it sensible to your brethren or your fellows when you come out. Report an error in the passage at 11:53 Highlight the passage at 11:53

12:14 And if they're operating from a theistic tradition, you're going to be speaking in that context, so it's not threatening to them, not making them feel like they're going to be heretics, something like that. People don't like to be threatened, including materialists. Materialists don't like to be threatened either, feeling they'd be separated from the flock. Report an error in the passage at 12:14 Highlight the passage at 12:14

12:31 And no longer welcome to scientific conferences because they've gone loopy, you know, meditating and, you know. So, the only safe time to do it is after you've retired. Report an error in the passage at 12:31 Highlight the passage at 12:31

12:45 And especially if you're a Nobel laureate, then you really feel like I've got a little bit of, you know, a little bit of flex room here. But they'll still write you off. There's a Nobel laureate, a neuroscientist, won a Nobel Prize and people still write him off because he refused to be a reductionist. Report an error in the passage at 12:45 Highlight the passage at 12:45

12:58 You know, he got old and he got soft-brained. But you put your finger on a very interesting and I think a very profound point of trying to make sense of contemplative practice. And it lies at the core of a lot of really theoretical differences from one tradition to the next, between Advaita Vedanta and Dvaita Vedanta, non-dualistic and dualistic Vedanta within the culmination of the Vedic tradition of India. Report an error in the passage at 12:58 Highlight the passage at 12:58

13:25 And you'll find this, you'll find in Christianity, they've pretty much sided on... You know, keep that separation. Augustine, Aquinas, Nicholas of Cusa, we're going to still hold on to there being some separation between you as a human being and God. You may, as Augustine said, you may have a face-to-face encounter with God, which he claimed to have had, and he characterized God as the unchanging light, not with a beard or anything silly like cartoon, no, an unchanging light, but a face-to-face encounter, but nevertheless face-to-face, and not a complete disillusion of duality. Report an error in the passage at 13:25 Highlight the passage at 13:25

14:00 And that really becomes pretty much that, hold to that one as deep as you go and hold to face to face and then we'll let you by. Start letting the face to face melt away and go to total unity and that's when we start, you know, getting the kindling together. Report an error in the passage at 14:00 Highlight the passage at 14:00

14:22 It's called excommunicated the hot way. But again, you've raised a very interesting and very important point. Exactly how do we define ourselves? How do we define ourselves? Where are the parameters? Report an error in the passage at 14:22 Highlight the passage at 14:22

14:38 And so there on it hangs a big tail, but it's really, I think, worthy of very deep consideration. And I find it interesting, if we go philosophical, I mean, I've written many books, well that's all articulation, but I would not be a content person if all I'd been doing is writing books for a whole bunch of years. Report an error in the passage at 14:38 Highlight the passage at 14:38

14:54 Then I'd say, ah, one more book, heck with it. But I write books and then go back to meditation, and then a book comes out back to meditation, back to meditation. And of course, the final thing I do will not be writing a book, but be going back to meditation. It's called dying. With no postscript. Unless I'm a little kid, okay, here comes my next book. What it was like to be Alan Wallace and be dead. Report an error in the passage at 14:54 Highlight the passage at 14:54

15:19 But we'll have to see about that. But exactly where do we draw the parameters? With the body, it's perfectly obvious. It's a skin, right? But then we go to the mind. And people, and not just loony people, probably some loony people too, but not just loony people, experiencing dreams. And feeling they've been visited in a dream. A relative come. People having premonitions of a dying relative. This has occurred so many times, it's hard to say you're all nuts. Report an error in the passage at 15:19 Highlight the passage at 15:19

15:49 But people having premonition of a loved one far away who's dying and having a sense, I just think that Aunt Nellie just died and you're right. Well, if that happens once in a while, I say, okay, well, just chance. But, you know, it just seems to be happening a little bit more commonly than chance. So this kind of remote viewing, especially where there's strong connection, like relatives, loved ones and so forth. Sometimes precognition, and yogis have been reporting on this for centuries, of having not just a hunch, but some kind of a really intuitive certainty, and then lo and behold it comes true. Report an error in the passage at 15:49 Highlight the passage at 15:49

16:22 Or dreams, and having a sense of being visited in a dream, and feeling that, no, I don't think this is just a concoction of my own subconscious, or just purely an appearance of my own substrate consciousness. But I do have a sense that my mind was porous and something came in. And people have been saying this kind of thing for a very long time, including the faith in which, you know, the chapel that we're sitting in. Report an error in the passage at 16:22 Highlight the passage at 16:22

16:44 People having visitations from the Virgin Mother, from a saint here, and back in the Gnostic tradition, Jesus himself and so forth. And so how porous is the mind? And as soon as we say it might be porous, as soon as one might say it's porous, that it's not enclosed. Number one, the stupidest idea is enclosing actually inside bone. Report an error in the passage at 16:44 Highlight the passage at 16:44

17:02 That's really... That really gives me the creeps. Where did he come up with that one? But if we move out of that one, even the notion that it has absolute borders, and so it's conscious, subconscious, but then it's totally encapsulated. There's nothing coming in from outside except by way of language and so forth. As soon as we consider the possibility it might be porous, open to information coming in from remote viewing, precognition, or actual having visions. Report an error in the passage at 17:02 Highlight the passage at 17:02

17:31 Dujun Lingba's whole text was having a vision. The primordial Buddha surrounded by a whole bunch of disciples who entered into a 400-page dialogue. And that was something that his awareness was open to. But it wasn't his just thinking all these thoughts. It really was a sense of coming from a deeper source. And so a lot could be said about this. I'll have to wrap it up. It's lunchtime. Report an error in the passage at 17:31 Highlight the passage at 17:31

17:52 But the demarcation, the border, the borderline between where do I end and where does not I begin? So in Buddhism, We'll find that it's a sliding barrier. It's a sliding border. It's not absolute. And that is, if I say that I, Alan Wallace, am six foot two tall, okay, that's good for this life only. That's it. And it's for this body. It's this. And it's just, it's contained. It's a true statement. I'm a relatively tall guy. But there we are. It's locked in right there. And then I can make statements about my mind, my psyche. Report an error in the passage at 17:52 Highlight the passage at 17:52

18:30 I'm relatively fluent in Tibetan. Okay, that's my psyche. But now when I lose my psyche and I lose all sense of my corporeality, I lose all of that. I slip into the substrate consciousness. Report an error in the passage at 18:30 Highlight the passage at 18:30

18:42 And then I come out. I can say, now, how shall I phrase it? Shall I say, I just transcended myself and I went into a non-something else outside of myself that I'm going to call blissful, luminous, non-conceptual, beyond Alan. No, I transcended Alan Hood. Into a non-Alan domain, I can say that. Or I can say, no, that was my substrate consciousness and it was beyond the domain of my psyche. Report an error in the passage at 18:42 Highlight the passage at 18:42

19:10 Beyond the domain of my personal history. Beyond the domain of the mental states, processes and so forth that arise independence upon my brain. Now let's make it more interesting. Let's imagine you tap into the substrate consciousness and then you perform an exercise that's been done probably hundreds if not thousands of times, just not recently and not in a public domain and not with a scientist involved. Report an error in the passage at 19:10 Highlight the passage at 19:10

19:30 And that is you get into the substrate consciousness and then you give yourself targets because bear in mind you're not locked in. You have analysis, investigation, you have a pliant, supple mind. You can do with it what you like. There's just no obsessive compulsive element to it. Now if you wish, resting in that luminous vacuity of your own substrate, you can direct your attention to a target. Report an error in the passage at 19:30 Highlight the passage at 19:30

19:49 Like where were you one week ago exactly, this morning, last Sunday, exactly where were you and what were you doing at noon? And you give yourself that target and like a laser pointer, you can illuminate that and get a very clear sense because there's no congestion in between. If you try it right now, you've got a week's worth of information and clutter that might make it a little bit difficult to remember details of exactly what you were doing at this time a week ago. Report an error in the passage at 19:49 Highlight the passage at 19:49

20:13 Maybe you'll be lucky and you'll have a very vivid memory, often not. But in the substrate, there's no static. There's nothing in between. It's just sheer luminosity and vacuity. Give yourself a target and boom, like a laser pointer, there it is. Well, give yourself a target of one week. Give yourself a target of 30 years. Where were you this day 30 years ago? Hit it with a laser pointer. What's been found is you can sharply focus. Report an error in the passage at 20:13 Highlight the passage at 20:13

20:39 You can get 30-year-old memories. Some of them come up spontaneously, which really astonish people. But now it's not spontaneous. You're targeted. Now let's imagine, and I'm just going to, okay, let's imagine you're 50 and I don't care. Let's imagine you're 50 and you target, okay, where were you exactly this day 52 years ago? Report an error in the passage at 20:39 Highlight the passage at 20:39

20:57 So I'm deliberately going beyond the womb. You're being in the womb. Well, the materialists would say, well, that was easy. Nowhere. You should be getting nothing at all. You got your laser pointer and just illuminated nothing whatsoever. But Buddhist contemplative is found out otherwise. You set that laser pointer and boom, and there you're having a memory of somebody else. Maybe somebody old, maybe somebody living in Brazil or America, who knows where. Report an error in the passage at 20:57 Highlight the passage at 20:57

21:25 But there you are as an old person and you're illuminating an experience where now you've got, maybe you're a man in that one, you've got a wife and she's still alive also and got great-grandchildren, etc., etc. And you can come up with detailed information that then can be tested. This is where there could be a real interface between very open-minded, critical, skeptical scientists. Report an error in the passage at 21:25 Highlight the passage at 21:25

21:45 Saying, I don't believe any of this, but show us the evidence. You come up with a memory of somebody else, detailed memories, and provide information that nobody else knows about. Report an error in the passage at 21:45 Highlight the passage at 21:45

21:56 And then that would be empirical evidence that has to be processed. And if one ignores it, then one is simply dogmatic and no longer a scientist. So, now, just for fun, let's imagine that's true. I'm not asking anybody to believe it, but Buddhists claim this has been going on for centuries. That they're getting veridical memories. Report an error in the passage at 21:56 Highlight the passage at 21:56

22:13 that are not stored in the brain, they're stored in the substrate consciousness and that's what you're tapping into, free flow. Now you can say, oh, I stepped out of myself. That was somebody else. That was a man living in Ontario. And he's not me. There's no genetic transfer. There's not me. That's one way of playing it. Or you can say, okay, now what I mean by me is I have, I had, I had previous incarnations. I had previous embodiments. And I've had many lives in the future and I'll probably have a number in the future, in the past and the future. Report an error in the passage at 22:13 Highlight the passage at 22:13

22:54 So now you've just decided to expand the scope of I. Instead of saying that somebody is simply somebody else, certainly looks like somebody else, and the mind arising there arose independence upon some other body, some other genetic stream and so forth and so on. Now you can say I'm speaking now from a deeper perspective. Report an error in the passage at 22:54 Highlight the passage at 22:54

23:10 That this manifestation here, like having a whole series of dreams in one night, you can say, well, they're all my dreams, even though I have a persona here and another person here and another person there. No, they're all my dreams, because what I'm identifying is the substrate from which all of those dreams arose, and the dream persona arose. But they're all my dreams. Report an error in the passage at 23:10 Highlight the passage at 23:10

23:28 But here is a man, here is a woman, here I'm a dog, and here I'm a butterfly. But no, they're all manifestations of me, of my incarnations in those dreams. And so now we've suddenly, wow, we've really expanded. Now you include male and female, human and non-human incarnations or manifestations. And so we've just decided to expand. Report an error in the passage at 23:28 Highlight the passage at 23:28

23:48 And now let's say you break through the substrate altogether. It's called textured and, what's his name? Meister Eckhart calls it in German, durchbruch, breaking through, literally. Medieval German, dochbruch, breaking through the individual continuum of your own soul, in his terminology, breaking through to the Godhead beyond the Trinity, breaking through there to something that is absolutely and inherently ineffable, inconceivable, but ultimately and absolutely divine. Report an error in the passage at 23:48 Highlight the passage at 23:48

24:21 And now in Buddhism we call it tekchö, breaking through, cutting through something that's gnarly, something that's rigid, and that is a reification of our own mind stream, breaking through that to suddenly open to an infinity. An open expanse, an infinite expanse of pristine awareness that is non-local, atemporal, non-individuated, but is not somebody else's. Report an error in the passage at 24:21 Highlight the passage at 24:21

24:42 Here's the deal in Buddhism. It would be easy to say, oh, I've just dissolved and now it's just God left. Uh-uh. They say, no, it's your own pristine awareness. And by that they're saying, not yours versus his, like everybody has your own. Not that way, it's not individuated. It's just your own in the sense that it's not anybody else's. It's not other than you. It's who you are. Report an error in the passage at 24:42 Highlight the passage at 24:42

25:04 When you're not caught up in identifying with this woman, this dream persona tonight, this past life, that future life, when you're not locked into and identifying with these multiple personas that are arising out of the substrate consciousness and not even identifying with this substrate consciousness versus his substrate consciousness, when you've released all that grasping, then you melt down into the ultimate ground, this pristine awareness, beyond individuation, space, time, locality and all of that. Report an error in the passage at 25:04 Highlight the passage at 25:04

25:31 And now you can say, okay, that's beyond me. That's what a Christian would say and still not be a heretic. Face to face I encounter the unchanging life of unindividuated, immutable, radiant, luminous, divine awareness. And praise be to the Lord. And so they're maintaining dualism because they've drawn the line in the sand. That's where I stop. Report an error in the passage at 25:31 Highlight the passage at 25:31

25:55 I'm on this side. And in the Buddhist tradition we say, Why are you drawing the line in the sand? It's just one more conceptual projection and there's no reason for it. And that is when you break through the psyche to the substrate and have now a deeper sense of I am, I've had countless lifetimes in the past, many in the future and so forth. Report an error in the passage at 25:55 Highlight the passage at 25:55

26:17 It's a deeper perspective from saying I am because I've had multiple lives and so forth. And now you break through that and now you're beyond individuation. And then the Buddhist tradition will say that's your pristine awareness. It's who you really are. Who you really are. So we'll extend the sense of selfhood all the way without cutting it off at any point and not be burned at the stake so you don't get torched for doing that in Buddhism. Report an error in the passage at 26:17 Highlight the passage at 26:17

26:43 So to sum up here, if we look at the second noble truth, the truth of the origin of suffering, according to Dzogchen, the root of suffering, the fundamental existential root of suffering, why are we vulnerable at all to suffering in this universe? It's because we identify with that which is not I or mine as being I or mine. Very much like being in a non-lucid dream. Report an error in the passage at 26:43 Highlight the passage at 26:43

27:13 Because there's nothing there that is really me. It's just apparitions. Identifying with that which is not I or mine as being I or mine. That's the delusion part. And then failing to recognize who we are. And that's the ignorance part. And so the whole path is to stop identifying with that which we are not and identifying that which we are. Report an error in the passage at 27:13 Highlight the passage at 27:13

27:38 And then the corollary statement in Dzogchen is there's one difference between Buddhas and unenlightened sentient beings. Buddhas know who they are and unenlightened sentient beings don't. Report an error in the passage at 27:38 Highlight the passage at 27:38

27:51 It all hinges on know thyself all the way. Oh yeah. Good. It's ten past as usual. We went ten minutes over so that's the time we're actually supposed to end. Report an error in the passage at 27:51 Highlight the passage at 27:51

28:05 And we'll come back at ten minutes past too and I'll see you then. Maintain unwavering mindfulness for the two hours. Report an error in the passage at 28:05 Highlight the passage at 28:05