Shamatha Retreat with Alan Wallace 2012 (part 42)

0:00 One session now will be guided. We'll go into this final phase of the awareness of awareness as taught by Padmasambhava. If you can feel really comfortable for 24 minutes sitting up, that would be preferable. If you're not comfortable, stay lying down. I will in this session make reference to pointing the direction, directing your awareness upwards, upwards. Report an error in the passage at 0:00 Highlight the passage at 0:00

0:23 Well, if you're sitting upright, that's perfectly obvious. Upwards is upwards. If you're in a supine position, then I would suggest when I say upwards, don't go to the ceiling, but go along your north-south axis of your body, your feet being in the south and your head being north. So go along that axis. I think that's clear, yes? And when I say in front of you, then in front of you is still in front of you, and then it would be what's up for you because you're lying on your back. Report an error in the passage at 0:23 Highlight the passage at 0:23

0:51 So this is, how do you say, it's an interesting exercise. For those of you sitting, you might want to, if your seat came with seatbelts, now's the time to put on your seatbelts. This is something of a ride. But also to help you get into the practice when we're doing it, and I won't need to give an analogy. Report an error in the passage at 0:51 Highlight the passage at 0:51

1:10 Let's try an exercise right now. I'll just have to pause for a minute. Report an error in the passage at 1:10 Highlight the passage at 1:10

1:22 Directly behind me, I'd like you to listen now very, very carefully. Directly behind me and quite some distance away. Way back there, behind me. Can you hear some strange sound? Listen very closely. Way over yonder. I can't quite make out what the sound is. Can you hear it? Report an error in the passage at 1:22 Highlight the passage at 1:22

1:48 Okay, that's enough. There wasn't any sound. But my words were perfectly clear and not difficult to do. And you didn't need to visualize anything. That's a major point there. You directed your attention this way. And you were attending very carefully. You happened to be attending to the domain of sound. Why not? Report an error in the passage at 1:48 Highlight the passage at 1:48

2:10 But you weren't visualizing anything. You didn't need to. If you were, that was redundant, superfluous. When I said it's not just behind my head, it's way back there, then you were able to direct your attention way behind me and then just kind of like, Report an error in the passage at 2:10 Highlight the passage at 2:10

2:29 and then maybe not coming up with anything. Or maybe you did hear some very strange, doesn't sound that I can't hear. But the point was that it's possible to direct your attention out to space without visualizing something. And just go out there with an openness and attend. Well, what we'll be doing following the teachings of Padmasambhava is we'll be directing our attention to above, to the right, left, down. Report an error in the passage at 2:29 Highlight the passage at 2:29

2:52 And we're going to do it in exactly that way. We're not listening for something, so we're not going to an auditory field. But in that same way, we'll be kind of casting our attention, our awareness. In these different directions. But just with an openness and with no visualization needed any more than you needed to visualize when you were listening to some hypothetical sound way, way behind me. Report an error in the passage at 2:52 Highlight the passage at 2:52

3:13 You didn't need to visualize some space or any sound maker. You were just there or not. It's that quality. That's a close analogy of directing your attention far away in space but then just being open with an awareness there without latching on to something. Okay? So, please find a comfortable position. This will be our last session. Report an error in the passage at 3:13 Highlight the passage at 3:13

3:33 Of guided meditation for the day and for awareness of awareness. Report an error in the passage at 3:33 Highlight the passage at 3:33

· · · silence, 1 minute

4:21 Let's read the remainder of the instruction by Padmasambhava, covering exactly what we just practiced. Report an error in the passage at 4:21 Highlight the passage at 4:21

4:31 So we're about 40 % down the page on page 12. It says, then do as before, that is settle your body, speech and mind. And now alternately, alternately, tightly concentrate your consciousness. While wholly concentrating it without wavering it. Wavering. So this total composure, this congealing, this unification of mind. And then gently release it, evenly resting it in openness. Report an error in the passage at 4:31 Highlight the passage at 4:31

4:55 Again, concentrate and again release. In that way, meditate with alternating constriction and release. So we've done that. And then at times, steadily direct your gaze. Now he's not talking with eyeballs, but the rays of your awareness, your mental awareness. Steadily direct your gaze up into the sky. Report an error in the passage at 4:55 Highlight the passage at 4:55

5:14 Steadily focus your awareness with the desire to be without anything on which to meditate. So it's a directionality but with no target. And then relax again. At times steadily, unwaveringly direct your awareness into the space on your right. At times direct it to the left. At times direct it downwards during each session. Rotate the gaze around in these directions or in those directions. And occasionally inquire what is that awareness of the one who is focusing the interest. Report an error in the passage at 5:14 Highlight the passage at 5:14

5:45 That's when we come back to the center. Let awareness itself steadily observe itself. At times let your mind come to rest in the center of your heart and evenly leave it there. Report an error in the passage at 5:45 Highlight the passage at 5:45

5:58 At times evenly focus it in the expanse of the sky and leave it there. Thus by shifting the gaze in various alternating ways the mind settles in its natural state. As indications of this, if awareness remains evenly, lucidly and steadily wherever it is placed. Samatha has arisen. So I think it's clear he's equating settling the mind in its natural state with Samatha having arisen and elsewhere by context we see that is exactly when the coarse mind dissolves into the substrate consciousness. Report an error in the passage at 5:58 Highlight the passage at 5:58

6:32 It is significant that he speaks here of seeing if you can so relax, so let go of the coarse mind, which does tend to be so heady, that is all of our senses actually, including not all of the touch, but we certainly have a lot of tactile sensation in the head. They're all up here. The eyes, hearing, nose, taste and touch are all up here. So this is a major locus of our experience of the whole world. Report an error in the passage at 6:32 Highlight the passage at 6:32

6:56 So it's no wonder that we feel that we're located here and that when we're looking at someone, you know I'm looking at you if I'm looking at your head. But if I look at any other body part, you kind of wonder why are you doing that? I'm up here. Report an error in the passage at 6:56 Highlight the passage at 6:56

7:11 No commentary. And so that's where the course mind is. And so interestingly enough, here's a statement. Empirical statement, difficult to test with science because science right now can't measure prāṇa, maybe one day, who knows, but you certainly can measure it from a first-person perspective, like you can measure your thoughts and emotions that are also invisible to science. Report an error in the passage at 7:11 Highlight the passage at 7:11

7:32 But in terms of these pranas, it is said that when you are in the waking state, Operating with your coarse mind, all of your senses operating, so normal, that the pranas associated with consciousness, because there's different types of pranas, some with digestion, evacuation, movement of limbs and so forth. Report an error in the passage at 7:32 Highlight the passage at 7:32

7:50 This goes into Indian Ayurvedic and traditional Tibetan medicine, the five types of major vata or energies in the body, the five minor types. But there's one type, we call it prāṇa, which is very strongly related to mind. And those pranas, those vital energies within the body that are strongly, Affiliated with, associated with consciousness, with states of mind. When you're in the waking state, ordinary consciousness, they all converge at the head. In this chakra right here, right in the forehead, but inside. Report an error in the passage at 7:50 Highlight the passage at 7:50

8:21 So pretty much frontal cortex, the higher brain. And so that's where the energy is really activated, that's where it's really operating in the waking state. Now it is said that when you fall asleep and you're dreaming, then those same energies, it said they descend down to the throat chakra. So they're down here. And this is why if you read any traditional literature on dream yoga, one of the ways to arouse or catalyze a lucid dream is to actually do visualizations at the throat chakra. Report an error in the passage at 8:21 Highlight the passage at 8:21

8:52 An orb of red light or something more elaborate. But actually to bring your attention here. And the one way of bringing prāṇa, congealing or converging prāṇa in your body to a particular place is by visualizing something there. And that theme is played out enormously in Vajrayana. Visualizing seed syllables and colors and lights and deities and all kinds of things. The idea there is to bring in very specific configurations of energy into the body. Report an error in the passage at 8:52 Highlight the passage at 8:52

9:17 It's very, very high tech. Very, very subtle contemplative science, let's say. But very simply put, when you want to deliberately induce dreaming and do so consciously, then Padmasambhava says actually in this text, as I recall, there's a whole section on dream yoga, in natural liberation. He says, now visualize, he gives you a visualization, a rather elaborate one, not that simple, inside the throat, in the throat chakra. Report an error in the passage at 9:17 Highlight the passage at 9:17

9:46 And he says, hold that visualization as you fall asleep. Well, if you're a very accomplished yogi and know how to relax really deeply and can visualize at the same time. Then that would be one way to fall asleep consciously. And as you're doing so, by bringing this visualization here, the throat chakra, you're converging the energies there. Report an error in the passage at 9:46 Highlight the passage at 9:46

10:06 That'll knock you right into the dream state and you'll go in lucidly. Now you do have to be something of an experienced yogi for that. Otherwise, you try visualizing. I've taught this. I've taught this to Westerners. Invariably, if they're visualizing, they're not falling asleep. They just stay awake. Then you don't dream. But in principle, that can be done. Report an error in the passage at 10:06 Highlight the passage at 10:06

10:25 Whereas... When you go into dreamless sleep, but nowadays it's called stage four non-REM sleep, so deep dreamless sleep, then those same energies, they descend and converge at the heart chakra. Report an error in the passage at 10:25 Highlight the passage at 10:25

10:39 And so here, when he says, let your mind descend to the heart, what he's doing is, when you do that, then by letting your awareness descend there, with or without any visualization, Then the awareness being so closely conjoined with the prāṇa, the pranas converge there as well, and such that just by letting your awareness come to rest in the heart chakra, that will already help melt your coarse mind and dissolve it into substrate consciousness. Report an error in the passage at 10:39 Highlight the passage at 10:39

11:04 Because that's all that's left when you're in deep, dreamless sleep. That's a little bit of background there. So those are his complete instructions, step by step. This is the most elaborate version of teachings or instructions on awareness of awareness as a method of shamatha. I find it very helpful. But I would say that all of these phases, including this one of going up and to the right, left, down, it sounds almost like calisthenics or gymnastics of the mind, that my sense of it is really that it's very, very much like the warming up exercises before you go on a marathon. Report an error in the passage at 11:04 Highlight the passage at 11:04

11:37 And when you've gotten that spaciousness, in other words, break out of any sense that the space of your awareness is small, that it's located inside your head or some little gray space or anything like that, just, you know, like elbow room, poke it up to the left. Out to the right. Give me some space. And you've already done in and out before, remember? So now, okay, now I've got some space. Report an error in the passage at 11:37 Highlight the passage at 11:37

11:59 All right, now I've got a big, big, big space here. And then he says expand into space. As you've gone into the nucleus, now go supernova and just go blow your mind. And with that openness, which is clear, discerning, all of that, then you're ready for the marathon. With that openness, no object, still, clear, lucid. Report an error in the passage at 11:59 Highlight the passage at 11:59

12:20 Then just keep it simple. And then just follow Tsongkhapa. Just rest in that awareness and then just go all the way and let shamatha happen to you. Because there's really, you'll keep on, if you do this, and I've got students now doing this for a couple of years, it's very easy to kind of feel, I should be doing something more. Report an error in the passage at 12:20 Highlight the passage at 12:20

12:36 How can I speed this up? I'm not progressing. I need to do something. Am I doing it right? Probably I can do it better. Maybe you're doing it wrong, in which case correct it. But as I've said so many times now, do it right and know you're doing it right. And doing this right means you're not doing anything at all or almost nothing. And that is you're just staying home and being home and then letting shamatha rise up to meet you. Report an error in the passage at 12:36 Highlight the passage at 12:36

12:58 Because the method itself is so similar to the culmination of the practice that you just, it's almost like fake it until you make it. You're faking shamatha until shamatha has happened. So let's just finish this off and then we'll have our break. It's actually five o 'clock now. So if awareness becomes muddled, so now he's giving you some, okay, well, what if it goes wrong if you do this incorrectly? And of course that's possible. If awareness becomes muddled and without mindfulness, that is a problem of laxity or dimness. Report an error in the passage at 12:58 Highlight the passage at 12:58

13:26 So clear it up, inspire it and shift your gaze. So move around, get it activated again, brighten it up. If it becomes distracted and excited, it is important that you lower your gaze and release your awareness. So this is a really wonderful familiar refrain. Lower it, get grounded and then loosen up. If samādhi arises in which there is nothing of which you can say this is meditation and this is conceptualization, if it's getting muddled where you're not quite sure is this thinking, not thinking, my stepdaughter called that sleepitating. Report an error in the passage at 13:26 Highlight the passage at 13:26

13:58 Kind of in between sleep and kind of meditating, maybe not, I'm not sure. Then this is the problem of oblivion or maybe sleepitating. So meditate with alternating concentration and release. So that kind of cleans things up again. It's almost like cleaning out a clogged pipe, like a plunger going back and forth until it's all clean. Just clean it out. Clean it out. Report an error in the passage at 13:58 Highlight the passage at 13:58

14:18 Get it clear. And then recognize who is meditating. That's where you're doing the cognoscopy, probing right into the nature of the agent, the one who's releasing and averting, the one who is aware. Recognize the flaws of shamatha and eliminate them right away. So one can say, hey, that one paragraph says, hey, this is not simply non-judgmental. Report an error in the passage at 14:18 Highlight the passage at 14:18

14:38 Like whatever comes, it's all fine, it's all swell, this is all perfect, I'm embracing everything that comes up. Then that's just new agey, new agey disordather, it's just nothing. So you need to recognize when you're doing it incorrectly and then clean it up. Exercise sound judgment. Finally, flawless shamatha, now we go back again to metaphor. Report an error in the passage at 14:38 Highlight the passage at 14:38

14:57 If you've not achieved it, then deal with the metaphor. Flawless shamatha is like an oil lamp that is unmoved by the wind. Wherever the awareness is placed, it is unwaveringly present. Awareness is vividly clear without being sullied by laxity, lethargy or dimness. Wherever the awareness is directed, it is steady and sharply pointed, like that laser pointer. Report an error in the passage at 14:57 Highlight the passage at 14:57

15:17 And unmoved by adventitious or random roving thoughts, it is straight. Thus a flawless meditative state arises in one's mind stream. And until this happens, it is important that the mind is settled in its natural state. So once again, he's really pointing to this, as Lerab Lingma did. And so many other great masters have done. This is really foundational. This is not some super advanced state that you have to do a lot of preliminary practices and mantras and visualizations and so forth and so on. Report an error in the passage at 15:17 Highlight the passage at 15:17

15:47 If you go right back to the early teachings of the Buddha, there were no preliminary practices as shamatha. It's shila samādhi prajna. It's ethics. Ethics is the foundation. Ethics is your preliminary practice. Get your act together in terms of your whole way of behaving in the world. And then go and start balancing your mind. Report an error in the passage at 15:47 Highlight the passage at 15:47

16:02 You don't have to watch a sattva or develop bodhicitta or something like that first. I mean, all those have their place. But, you know, we don't really need a preliminary practice to becoming sane. Sane sanity is the preliminary practice. So without, and then he really makes this point strongly, without genuine shamatha arising in one's mind stream, even if awareness, this is pristine awareness, is pointed out, even if you go to some Dzogchen master, and the Dzogchen master gives you pointing out instructions to Rikpa. Report an error in the passage at 16:02 Highlight the passage at 16:02

16:31 Those instructions, whatever comes to mind, it becomes nothing more than an object of intellectual understanding. So you just lock into it. Your mind is in spasm anyway. It conceptualizes, locks on to, reifies, bifurcates everything it touches. It's got the Midas touch of it, turning everything to lead. And so if you're still in that old habitual mode of OCDD, and then some great Lama points out awareness to you, the OCDD mind will just take over. Report an error in the passage at 16:31 Highlight the passage at 16:31

16:58 Lock onto it and say, ah, yeah, I've got Shamat. I figured it out the other day when this great Lama pointed out, yeah, I know exactly what it is. I think I'm going to write a paper. No, I'm going to start teaching because I got it figured out. I got a lock on it. I nailed it. I nailed it. I know all about it. In which case, the metaphor I love is going out to the middle of Sahara and bringing a whole bag of a kit and actually a cage kit. Report an error in the passage at 16:58 Highlight the passage at 16:58

17:25 And going out to the center and then out there all by yourself building yourself a cage with iron bars. You know, really solid cage. Building it with iron bars and then getting inside and then locking the cage and then throwing the key as far away as you can. Report an error in the passage at 17:25 Highlight the passage at 17:25

17:42 Sound like fun? Report an error in the passage at 17:42 Highlight the passage at 17:42

17:46 This is what happens when we just lock ourselves into concepts, into this reification and so forth. We've created the trap. We throw away the key and then we start complaining. Report an error in the passage at 17:46 Highlight the passage at 17:46

17:57 So it becomes nothing more than an object of intellectual understanding and one is left simply giving lip service to the view, the Dzogchen view, and there's a danger that one may succumb to dogmatism. Very, very easily happens. And then people, you know, very triumphantly saying, I'm a Dzogchen practitioner. I am above you mere Vajrayana people and you Hinayana people, you're not even worthy of my consideration. Report an error in the passage at 17:57 Highlight the passage at 17:57

18:18 And you mere Sutrayana people doing Bodhisattva, well, one day you'll get up to my level. And all you non-Buddhists, well, never mind you, you're nothing special. Because I'm Tsukkhapa. That's definitely, you've just locked yourself in your own cage and throw away the key. Thus the root of all meditative states depends upon this, the settling the mind into natural state. Report an error in the passage at 18:18 Highlight the passage at 18:18

18:38 So do not be introduced to pristine awareness too soon, but practice until there arises a fine experience of stability, which really I think is nothing more than sanity, really exceptional sanity. And with just a few quotes, since we want to end at ten after, as usual. Report an error in the passage at 18:38 Highlight the passage at 18:38

18:57 Two quotes from the Vajra Essence, which I've cited quite extensively now. And now what we see here, from this Dzogchen classic, is just kind of pure, unadulterated discovery mode. Report an error in the passage at 18:57 Highlight the passage at 18:57

19:10 And that is, there's nothing you need to do to become enlightened. There's an awful lot you need to stop doing. And once you've done that, then enlightenment just happens to you. And so he says here, this is Dujum Lingva again, leaving your body, speech and mind in a state of inactivity. It's the unsurpassed supreme technique of inserting the vital energy and mind into the central channel. Where it goes into the central channel, you achieve shamatha, goes into this indestructible bindu at the heart, you achieve rikpa, pristine awareness, and you're awakened. Report an error in the passage at 19:10 Highlight the passage at 19:10

19:42 This happened just by going, just total release. Or a bit more elaborately from the same text. Motionlessly, that is, if there's still any qualms about whether this is really just some California hippie who's allowing you to... Lie down when so many other teachers would say, oh man, what a flake. Unless you lie down? You've got to be kidding, you flaky people. Report an error in the passage at 19:42 Highlight the passage at 19:42

20:04 Everybody who's serious sits up in Vajrasana with seven points. So here's Vajra Essence. Motionlessly relax your body in whatever way is comfortable, like an unthinking corpse in a charnel ground. I have yet to see an unthinking corpse in a charnel ground sitting in full lotus with seven points of vibrational posture. Report an error in the passage at 20:04 Highlight the passage at 20:04

20:28 It's more like, gosh, maybe Shavasana, corpse position. It's probably more like what a corpse would be good at. So just flake out, motionlessly relax your body in whatever's way comfortable, like an unthinking corpse in the charnel ground. Check. Now that's for body. Now speech. Let your voice be silent like a lute with its strings cut. There's effortless silence. Check. Report an error in the passage at 20:28 Highlight the passage at 20:28

20:50 Then mind. Let your mind rest in an unmodified state like the primordial presence of space. Check. You've just rested your body, speech and mind in the natural state. Remain for a long time in these three ways of resting. This pacifies all illnesses due to disturbances of the elements and unfavorable circumstances and your body, speech and mind naturally calm down. Report an error in the passage at 20:50 Highlight the passage at 20:50

21:13 The ultimate purpose of this practice is to experience Dharmakaya, Buddha mind, enlightenment, free of activity. So that's just totally unadulterated discovery approach. There's nothing to do. Stop doing everything. And then it's as if there's kind of a gravitational pull of your Buddha nature wanting to draw you to it. And we keep on putting up blocks of all the things we're doing. Report an error in the passage at 21:13 Highlight the passage at 21:13

21:41 Reification, the bifurcation, the OCDD and so forth and so on. So this is Dzogchen. Well here's his Holiness the Dalai Lama. Totally accomplished in the galupa view. He is a galupa to a very large extent. He's written now two books that is based upon his teachings. Two books have been edited, polished, published on Dzogchen. Report an error in the passage at 21:41 Highlight the passage at 21:41

21:58 This is from his earlier one. I've attended both of the big teachings, actually three teachings he's given on Dzogchen, California, France and then in Sikkim about a year and a half ago. But in his earlier teachings in San Jose, California, he made this statement, when you rest the mind, putting it out of work, the vital energies naturally become refined and solely by non-conceptual meditation you slip into the clear light, this is Rigpa, with the mind and vital energies. Report an error in the passage at 21:58 Highlight the passage at 21:58

22:27 So it happens naturally. This requires settling in complete inactivity, which is not easy. I know he'd be laughing when he said that last part. Like it suddenly sounds like, oh good, I don't have to do all that hard stuff. And they said, but it's not so easy. So those are the complete teachings. Hey, we just finished. Report an error in the passage at 22:27 Highlight the passage at 22:27

22:47 We'll look at the concluding phases of the nine stages tomorrow. But those are the complete teachings of the three methods. We can have question-answer discussion. That's really core. And we see really for all three of them, they are simple. None of them are that easy. But they're not intrinsically hard. They're just simple and subtle. And they go from subtle to subtle to subtle. Report an error in the passage at 22:47 Highlight the passage at 22:47

23:10 So there we are. So it's now 10 past. Let's converge again at 10 past 7. See you then. Now it's a bit dark. Report an error in the passage at 23:10 Highlight the passage at 23:10