← B. Alan Wallace

Shamatha Retreat with Alan Wallace 2012 (part 45)

B. Alan Wallace · 2012 · 1 h 8 min · Vajrayana Institute via Internet Archive

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  • 1:38

    So there's kind of a grand tour of all the methods in one session, all packed into 24 minutes. I'd like to just pick up where we left off yesterday, just with this very short quote from the Dalai Lama to read it again. When you put the mind at rest, when you rest the mind... When you rest the mind, putting it out of work, vital energies naturally become refined. Solely by non-conceptual meditation, you slip into the clear light with the mind and vital energies.

  • 2:33

    But very close with this just shamatha without a sign which is right next door. But we see that there has been kind of a progression here of less and less activity. So just from phase one of mindfulness of breathing where you're withdrawing your awareness from all the senses outside of the body coming in and then you're doing so little. You're just lying there or sitting there and just being aware and balancing the tension but you're doing very little.

  • 4:31

    And I would suggest that it could look like that on the surface and it's profoundly not the case. But then how is it not the case? Well, let's take the analogy, maybe the last time I referred to it, but it's such a cool analogy, lucid dreaming, a lucid dream. And that is if you're in the midst of a lucid dream, or number one, let's say even here, To transition from non-lucidity to lucidity, then you have to somehow get outside of the total absorption into the persona of who you think you are in the dream.

  • 8:02

    This may be enough for you to actually identify rikpah, pristine awareness, and to break right through the substrate consciousness to this deepest dimension of awareness, pristine awareness, which is what manifests at death, the clear light of death. But then you rest in that, and when you're just resting there in rikpah, you're resting in a state of complete inactivity, and now it's absolute inactivity. When you're resting in the substrate consciousness, it's said to be non-conceptual, but not completely.

  • 25:39

    Come awake and then suddenly relative bodhicitta just flows out spontaneously. So you don't necessarily have to do some extra method to arouse that. So this is the method the Dalai Lama emphasizes. He says, you know, to realize Dzogchen, and he's taught it repeatedly now. Take this step by step. Nowadays really emphasizing shamatha, which wasn't strong emphasis from him for a long time. Now he is. But then always teachings on emptiness, middle way view, dependent origination.

0:08 We will have two sessions. I would invite you to, in the first session, just to focus on probably mindfulness of breathing, but whatever gives you that sense of groundedness and also where you have, as I said, good correction or the sense of confidence that you really feel you know your way through. Report an error

0:25 So the first session will be in silence, really to cultivate these fundamental grounding qualities, relaxation and so forth. And in the second session, I'll give some more guidance, more synthesis rather than new. New material, because we pretty well covered now all three methods, but now how they could be synthesized, how they interrelate, I'll try to shed some light on that in the next session. Report an error

0:45 So first one will be in silence, second one will be guided. Report an error

· · ·

1:38 So there's kind of a grand tour of all the methods in one session, all packed into 24 minutes. I'd like to just pick up where we left off yesterday, just with this very short quote from the Dalai Lama to read it again. Report an error

1:55 When you put the mind at rest, when you rest the mind... When you rest the mind, putting it out of work, vital energies naturally become refined. Solely by non-conceptual meditation, you slip into the clear light with the mind and vital energies. This requires settling in complete inactivity, which is not easy. So this is kind of the culmination of the whole trajectory that we've been following for the last six days. Report an error

2:25 But we haven't quite gotten there, because he was referring actually to Dzogchen meditation. And we haven't gotten into Dzogchen meditation per se, but just... But very close with this just shamatha without a sign which is right next door. But we see that there has been kind of a progression here of less and less activity. Report an error

2:43 So just from phase one of mindfulness of breathing where you're withdrawing your awareness from all the senses outside of the body coming in and then you're doing so little. You're just lying there or sitting there and just being aware and balancing the tension but you're doing very little. And then when you go into settling the mind in this natural state, focusing right there on the mind, then again doing so little. I mean, you could be doing all kinds of things with the mind, as you could be modifying your breath when you're attending to the breath, but we're not doing it. Report an error

3:14 And then when we come into awareness of awareness, now we're not even attending to the mind, but just being aware. And we're doing a little bit, maybe the oscillation, but then we stop with that. And so this whole progression is kind of one of doing less and less and less. And then he says, When you go into Dzogchen, which is then going into the deepest end of the pool, to really fathom the deepest dimension of consciousness, he then says you're settling into complete inactivity. Report an error

3:39 So one might wonder, especially with people who have a background in, especially Mahāyāna Buddhism, one might kind of wonder, well, what's all of this exaltation about inactivity? I mean, what's wrong with activity? There's a lot of things that need to be done in the world. The whole bodhisattva ideal, isn't this all about? Report an error

3:57 You know, getting out there and really being of service. Indeed, achieving enlightenment, but in order to alleviate suffering, assist the world in a myriad of ways. Is this not just kind of an escape into quietism? And in the Christian tradition, they actually speak of that, an escape into quietism, where the hermit will just go off to the cave and shut off the world and just try to find his own negotiated peace. Report an error

4:20 You know, like that. And is that what this is about? Just kind of a bailing out on the whole of the world so you can find your own peace either in the substrate consciousness or maybe a much deeper peace in pristine awareness. And I would suggest that it could look like that on the surface and it's profoundly not the case. But then how is it not the case? Well, let's take the analogy, maybe the last time I referred to it, but it's such a cool analogy, lucid dreaming, a lucid dream. Report an error

4:48 And that is if you're in the midst of a lucid dream, or number one, let's say even here, To transition from non-lucidity to lucidity, then you have to somehow get outside of the total absorption into the persona of who you think you are in the dream. Because if you really think that's who you are, then you're not dreaming. This is who you are. This is it. This is simply reality. So one way or another... Report an error

5:16 You need to not only get yourself out of that identity, but that persona in the dream, all that persona's hopes and fears and hoping the dream will turn out this, of course we know it's a dream, he doesn't, she doesn't, hoping it will turn out this way, doesn't turn out that way, aspiring for this, fearing this and cringing from that and so forth, as long as you're inside that persona, 100%, you're inside that person in the dream. Report an error

5:40 And you're 100 % focused on, I want happiness, I want to be free of suffering, and it's all focused hedonically. Other people, situations, places, things and so forth. Then you've just sealed your fate. Insofar as you're locked into that, well you're not going to become lucid. You're totally caught up in the drama. You're like an actor who's suffered, maybe when he sets foot on the movie stage, has a blow to the head and suddenly forgets that he's an actor. Report an error

6:09 And then gets totally absorbently in the role and never comes out. Well, that could be a problem. And so to become lucid, to become lucid, well, Report an error

6:24 one way or another, you need to slip out of that persona so you can see it from a more panamic perspective and taking it all in and seeing where does this all come from and recognizing the dream as the dream. But this in a way means you need to deactivate your persona and working from inside of that persona so that you can step outside and now you can be active but active from the perspective of being awake. Report an error

6:51 Active from the perspective of being awake. So that's what's happening here. This whole strategy from Samatha and on into Vipassanā which we're skipping for the time being and then on into Dzogchen is really an ongoing gradual deactivation and a stepping out of Our reified sense of this is who I really am. This is I. This is mine. These are my hopes, my hedonic hopes and fears. A gradual deactivation of that and a withdrawal into utter simplicity and into stillness. Report an error

7:20 But then does it culminate there? Is this the end point? I mean, we know the end point of shamatha. It's coming to stillness in the substrate consciousness. But I've said, of course, I've said many, many times now. That is the end point of shamatha and the beginning of everything else. Because now you've got a serviceable mind for everything else you might want to do, which could be very good. Report an error

7:40 We'll see in a minute the trait effects. But having deactivated that, then optimally, and if one is a person of, let's say, very sharp faculties or very gifted in this practice, you might go directly from the shamatha without a sign as you're inverting in right in upon the agent and then releasing and then Padmasamava says, This may be enough for you to actually identify rikpah, pristine awareness, and to break right through the substrate consciousness to this deepest dimension of awareness, pristine awareness, which is what manifests at death, the clear light of death. Report an error

8:15 But then you rest in that, and when you're just resting there in rikpah, you're resting in a state of complete inactivity, and now it's absolute inactivity. When you're resting in the substrate consciousness, it's said to be non-conceptual, but not completely. There are little bubbles of concepts that will come up and moreover on a subtle level, when you're just resting there in the substrate consciousness, then there are these tentacles of clinging that come out. Report an error

8:40 They're very slender, but they're very strong. And the tentacles of clinging come out to the qualities of the substrate consciousness, to the bliss and clinging on to it, holding on to it, not wishing to relinquish. Clinging to the luminosity, clinging to the non-conceptuality, and clinging there, wanting to hold on to it, not wanting to budge, then there's still some activity. Report an error

9:02 And there's still some sense of, I want it, I want it. It's very primal, it's very inarticulate, but it can be very fierce also. And so, when you break through that to pristine awareness, to rikpa, then you've broken through... All of that coagulation, you've completely shattered this sense of a reified, individuated sense of self and moreover you've completely relinquished your grasping onto your own individual continuum of consciousness that is distinct, located in space and time. Report an error

9:33 You've released that as well and that's where the breakthrough is. Breaking through into a non-local, non-individuated, atemporal space of consciousness. Report an error

9:46 That is utterly transcended and indivisible from Dharma Datu, the absolute space of phenomena, out of which relative space-time emerges. So, Report an error

9:56 if this is true, if this is true, it shouldn't come as any surprise that the deepest contemplatives in Dzogchen, for example, the most realized masters in Dzogchen, when they come out and they start describing how does the universe evolve, how does the universe evolve, what is the role of the observer participant. Report an error

10:18 What is the nature of space? What's the nature of time? What's the nature of matter? Are these inherently existent or not? It shouldn't come as a surprise if they actually draw some very, very strikingly similar conclusions to those physicists who are on the very cutting edge of modern physics, as in quantum cosmology, who spent now, if we speak of it generationally, 400 years probing not into the space of the mind but into the space of the physical universe. Report an error

10:45 And start talking about the role of the observer participant, how time is frozen unless you introduce the observer and so forth. Because one's coming through the front door, right here, through the front door, the trajectory of modern science for the last 400 years. Let us look outwards and try to fathom that. Report an error

11:01 Turning it around through quantum mechanics, quantum cosmology, finding the more we probe outwards, the more we see that the observer participant is playing a crucial role, which then raises very deep issues about the nature of consciousness. And in Dzogchen, you're probing right into the nature of consciousness, and you're coming out the other end, making statements about space, time and so forth, which, as I've outlined in a couple of my books, mine in the balance, they are remarkably similar. Report an error

11:27 And so it could look like, well, the mystics had some really good hunches and the scientists really know what they're talking about. But in fact, it's not that way at all. If it's true that both of these, that consciousness itself and the whole space-time of the natural world are actually integrated at their root, then you should be able to probe either one and to the greatest depth it will dovetail around and lead to the other. Report an error

11:49 So that's, once again, that's one more aspect of the 21st century that's unprecedented. There could be an enormous convergence here, right? So this does bring us to, oh, and now this crucial point to let the shoe drop. So you deactivate this persona within the dream that you call your ordinary life. You deactivate that. All that sense of I'm really over here, I'm intubated, I'm not you, I'm here, I'm not over there and completely break through that, release that, come to rest in a dimension of awareness that is all-encompassing. Report an error

12:23 That is all-encompassing, this primordial consciousness. Then, having deactivated this little configured persona of who you think you are, then now activity arises from the dimension of pristine awareness. And this is called enlightened activity. Enlightened activity. It's coming right out of, directly from pristine awareness. It's the impulses, the spontaneous displays. Report an error

12:49 They're called hundup. Spontaneous actualizations arising right out of. This deepest dimension of consciousness. And they're unpremeditated, they are effortless, and they're spot on. And those are the activities of a Buddha. So having deactivated one, you can activate the other. It's rather like in a computer. I like this. It's really dorky. Report an error

13:11 And so now I'm definitely stepping over into the realm of being a Buddhist nerd. If I'm already up to my neck there, I'm about to take the plunge. But with your computer. Sometimes it just is acting kind of in a funky way, just being unruly, just something isn't working. What do we do? Before calling 911 or the computer jock and so forth and so on, what do you do? Report an error

13:35 You reboot. Whether it's your cell phone, that's happened to my cell phone a couple of times, just not doing something right, just turn it off. And then turn it back, ah, problem solved, whatever it was, just had to turn it off. And then, and likewise with the rebooting. Well, this is exactly what we're doing in shamatha. We're rebooting this ordinary mind. We're just turning it off and then rebooting out of the substrate consciousness. Report an error

14:01 That's one level of reboot. But the radical reboot is to break through even your substrate consciousness, go into the absolute zero degrees Kelvin inactivity of the pristine awareness and then from that rebooting and then what comes out of that. are all spandienist displays of enlightened awareness. So you're back to now infinite activity, having shut down the finite activity. Report an error

14:30 So, quite interesting. So this is a segue. I've been asked a couple of times now to let you folks know that some of you may or may not know that this retreat in Amshamata, the six-day retreat, that this has been, I've been teaching this for several years by now. is the first in a sequence of five retreats that I've been doing. The first one, you just had it, we're almost finished. The second one is going right into foundational Vipassanā practice, the four applications of mindfulness. Report an error

14:59 The third one is the four measurables, loving kindness and so forth, cultivating the heart. The fourth one is going into dream yoga and deeper into Vipassanā and the nature of mind. Dream yoga, lucid dreaming, the whole thing. And then the fifth one and the culminating one in this five-fold series is an introduction to Dzogchen. Report an error

15:17 With a great perfection. So that's been the series. But with all the conferences, the happiness, its potential conferences, the mind that's potential conferences, Tony Steele has asked me, I think with very good reason, to keep on coming back to shamatha every fall. So every March, April. Because there continues to be interest and lo and behold, 61 people showed up this fall as well. Report an error

15:41 But then in the spring, then what we've done is we've been rotating. So a few years back we did the four applications. Then a couple of years back we did four measurables. And then I think it was just last year we did the dream yoga, dream yoga and lucid dreaming. And so we will complete the series. There was some discussion about it. Report an error

15:59 I've been in dialogue with Beth Pelham and with Tony Steele. But in late October of this year, then we will complete the series and we will have an introduction to Dzogchen. We'll go directly to that one. And you might think, oh, but if you've not attended all the other ones, maybe you shouldn't go there. And maybe you shouldn't, that's your call. But I will say this, that there is just a natural segue, and it's kind of obvious. Report an error

16:24 We're just ending on Dzogchen, statements from the Vajra Essence, from the Dalai Lama, about this awareness of awareness, how that can take you directly to Dzogchen. And it can, to a direct realization of Rikpa. So I guess this is an announcement. I was asked to do so. I've done so. That's how we'll spend six days in the spring, in late October, going right into it. And it will be a classic text. Report an error

16:44 It's a modern classic, but it is a splendid text. And it shows, so it's an introduction to Dzogchen, and it shows in only 10 pages, 10-15 pages, Report an error

16:55 The Dzogchen view, so introduced to, well, what's the worldview here? Then what is the meditation, but also what is the way of life that supports that? So it's a very integrated, profoundly integrated approach, not just getting open presence or just kind of just a technique here or there, but have the whole integrated package of the view, the meditation and the way of life. Report an error

17:18 So one can go directly there and you're not... And you may not be missing out on anything at all. For some people, that actually will be the most effective strategy, to go directly from shamatha, especially settling the mind and awareness of awareness, and go directly to Dzogchen. And for others, a more gradual approach will be more effective. Just step by step, the shamatha, and then taking that stable and clear mind and applying it. Report an error

17:43 Closely, this mindfulness, to closely attending to your body, this body within what we may later call the dream, but this in the waking state, attending closely to the body, to feelings, mental states and phenomena, actively cultivating loving kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, equanimity, then going into dream yoga, and then finally, then there's Dzogchen, that also, I mean I've chosen that sequence, and that's what's outlined in this book, Genuine Happiness, that whole series there. Report an error

18:10 But I'd like to give a metaphor, and then we'll go back and finish off these nine stages, that I think, again, is very powerful. It is about lucid dreaming. So here's the metaphor, kind of a parable, a parable metaphor. And that is, imagine that you're in a lucid dream, but you don't know it. So as far as you're concerned, this is just reality. This is what's happening. But somebody who is awake recognizes that you're dreaming. Report an error

18:33 In fact, let's say this is a person who is awake. And this person is a very cool person. This person is clever. It has some kind of magical abilities. And is able to, let's say it's a woman. This woman, she is really awake and she has some special psychic ability that she's able to penetrate into your dream. Report an error

18:55 So there you are cruising along in your dream. But she can see, maybe she sees you in bed. And you're restless and you're struggling and you're kicking and grunting. It looks like not a very pleasant dream and she'd really like to help you out. She's awake and she knows you're totally caught up in a dream that doesn't look very pleasant at all. Report an error

19:11 Maybe you're crying out, whimpering, cringing and so forth. She says, oh, I've got to help this person. But happily, she's kind of psychic. And so she then, as you're dreaming along, of course you don't know she's dreaming, she does. She managed to get into your dream and she manifests in a way that would be, That we catch your attention. Catch your attention in the right way. In your right way. And she comes to you really as a spiritual friend. Report an error

19:39 She comes to you in your dream as a spiritual friend. And she sees how restless you are and how troubled and anxious and sometimes depressed and unsatisfied. And she cultivates a friendship with you and she says, you know, I see you're quite distressed. I think I can help you out here. And she teaches you shamatha. She teaches you shamatha. Report an error

20:01 Gives you some peace of mind, helps you rest in your body, feel more relaxed, chill, relax a little bit and then stabilize. So you had six days of that. And so she teaches you shamatha and imagine in this parable you take to it because you really were needy, you really wanted something, you were not finding satisfaction and you really get along there in shamatha, maybe even achieve it, even actually achieve shamatha. Report an error

20:23 And so mission accomplished. Now you've really got a lot of serenity. You can tap into this little artesian well of genuine happiness whenever you like. It's not ultimate, but it's pretty sweet. And so there you are kind of cruising along, very grateful to her. She's a swell person. That was really nice. But then she comes over and she kind of nudges you and says, you know, this won't really last. Report an error

20:41 I mean, this is nice, but why don't you go deeper? Come out to the dream again. Don't just kind of seclude yourself in the substrate consciousness. But come out here. This is a pretty interesting dream. Why don't you take this stability and clarity, this pliancy and suppleness of your awareness that you achieved through shamatha. Report an error

20:59 Why don't you start exploring it? Exploring it. You've got a really fine tool now. And exploring the nature of phenomena. And she takes you right into the deep end, into the middle way of you to explore the nature of phenomena. Yourself within this world. Do you really exist? Here independently, autonomously as a reified entity of me. Is the world really there which appears to be absolutely out there? You start applying Vipassanā, probing into the nature of your own self as a subject. Report an error

21:27 Probing in the nature of objects. What's the relationship between objects and their attributes? Objects and appearances. And start probing into this, delving into this by way of Vipassanā. And she's a skillful guide and she leads you there. You start getting pretty inspired. Things are not as they appear. Report an error

21:43 You start to recognize things are not as they appear. Because everything appears to be absolutely there from its own side. Absolutely objective. And I appear to myself as being absolutely subjective. I am totally over here. You're totally over there. But as you probe in, you say, whoa, that is an illusion. That is an illusion. And you're probing in. Report an error

22:03 She's giving you that guidance. And you're probing in and you're seeing all these objects that seem to exist by their own inherent nature. Independently, intrinsically, they're not there. In fact, these are more like constructs congealed by the power of conceptual designation. But all that we really have is a whole matrix of appearances. Report an error

22:19 But none of these are independent and none of these objects or subjects exist in and of themselves. Separate, autonomous, independent. And so you start seeing how all of these phenomena really consist of empty appearances. Appearances are empty. Emptiness itself is manifesting as appearances. And you start getting into this flow like, well, this is really dreamlike. This is really dreamlike. And your spiritual friend starts to grin a little bit. Report an error

22:47 Yeah, it really is dreamlike, isn't it? And you're going deeper, deeper there until eventually she sees you're ready to break through. Got a really stable mind. You're no longer reifying yourself. You're no longer reifying yourself as the person that she knows is in a dream. And you just consider yourself. But you're no longer reifying that. You're seeing it's more simply a construct arising, independence upon conceptual designation. And so then she sets you aside. Report an error

23:16 And then she just gives you, sits down with you and says, you know, I can take you a step further. Would you like to come with me? You say, ah, sure, it's been good so far. And then she just sits down with you and gives you what are called pointing out instructions. And she just points out to you. In the midst of this dreamlike reality, she points out. Report an error

23:33 The nature of your own pristine awareness, your waking consciousness, the consciousness that has created the whole dream. And maybe she shows you some anomaly, something to rock your world. And suddenly, you release even the conventional identification with, I am this person. You release even the conventional, let alone the reification is absolutely real. Report an error

23:57 You release even that. And then suddenly, there's this discontinuity. And suddenly, You're within that dream. You are now viewing the dream from the perspective of waking consciousness. And now you become lucid. Report an error

24:12 So that could be very step by step by step. And now you're a lucid dreamer. Now you're awake within the dream. And now you can start acting within the dream from the perspective of waking consciousness as one who is awake rather than acting within the dream as one who is locked into the dream and still doesn't know what's going on. Report an error

24:32 Doesn't know that in fact this is all a dream. So at this point, now of course you're no longer saying, gee, this is like a dream. No, now from your perspective, this is a dream. And you know that. And now you can continue to be active, active, active and do whatever seems meaningful from that perspective of being awake. Report an error

24:51 So one can see here there's a very kind of conceptually, this is quite transparent, it's sensible, that first of all get a stable mind, ease the pain. Develop a little bit of genuine happiness, shamatha, get the mind really working well, then apply it to Vipassanā, probing into the nature of reality, seeing the dream-like nature of reality. Report an error

25:10 And then the next sequence is to break through, viewing the dream from within the dream, and viewing the dream from the perspective of waking consciousness, therefore becoming lucid. So there's quite a natural sequence there. And that is the classic sequence, shamatha. Vipassanā and Tek Chu, the breakthrough to pristine awareness, that's the classic strategy. And then bodhicitta, if you're wondering where is that, oh that comes from ultimate, relative bodhicitta comes from ultimate bodhicitta. Report an error

25:39 Come awake and then suddenly relative bodhicitta just flows out spontaneously. So you don't necessarily have to do some extra method to arouse that. So this is the method the Dalai Lama emphasizes. He says, you know, to realize Dzogchen, and he's taught it repeatedly now. Take this step by step. Nowadays really emphasizing shamatha, which wasn't strong emphasis from him for a long time. Now he is. But then always teachings on emptiness, middle way view, dependent origination. Report an error

26:08 This is really crucial to prepare you for Dzogchen. So there's the classic approach. This is the approach in quite a number of texts that I've translated now on Dzogchen. Shamatha, Vipassanā and then Dzogchen. But there are people who are very gifted who can go directly from the shamatha. And from the shamatha, by probing right into the very nucleus of awareness itself, puncture right through the substrate consciousness, realize rikpah. And by the realization of rikpah, by viewing reality from the perspective of pristine awareness, non-local, out of time, it's in the fourth time. Report an error

26:47 Rikpah is not in the past, present or future. Viewing from the fourth time. Viewing time from outside of time. Viewing space from outside of space. Viewing even the substrate consciousness from outside, from a waking perspective. Just by viewing reality from that perspective, you simply perceive all phenomena are empty of inherent nature. Report an error

27:10 Now here's the analogy, and that is quite not at all uncommon. In fact, for most of us, I've had lucid dreams, and just about without exception, maybe there are exceptions, I won't try to think of them right now, but overall, how do you become lucid in a dream? If you're in the midst of a non-lucid dream, and you become lucid, what causes you to become lucid? Report an error

27:31 And for most people, study Stephen Leberge, and I was notified through some really new, very good books on lucid dreaming. It's an anomaly. Some anomaly comes up. Report an error

27:42 Not too long ago, I did the standard test of jumping straight up. I was in a dream. I thought, could I be dreaming? I jumped straight up. Lo and behold, I hovered. I was just up there and hovered in midair. Okay, that's good enough for me. I must be dreaming. And then you can continue on with your lucid dream. Report an error

28:00 Because that does very frequently happen. If you're in the midst of a dream and you jump straight up, you'll either float down slowly, slowly, or you'll remain hovering, or you'll float off like a dandelion seed. But don't come clunking down because in the dream there's no gravity like we have in this waking state. It's different from almost everybody. Report an error

28:20 So it may be an anomaly, but as soon as, by hook or crook, whatever it is gets used to be lucid, once you are lucid, Once you clearly know that you are dreaming, then by the sheer power of that insight or the perspective from which you are viewing the dream, then you know that although all these appearances around you seem to be really out there, you already got it. Report an error

28:43 I'm dreaming. Therefore, they are not out there. You don't have to go one by one to see whether this person here is really here and that person there is really here. No, you're awake. You're awake. So you already get it. So simply by realizing the rikpa, you pick up realization of emptiness. And dependent origination by the power of being awake. Or you can approach it gradually, have realization of emptiness but not be awake. Still be conventionally locked into the dream, realizing it has no inherent existence. Report an error

29:11 But not yet be lucid. So there's a very gradual way there. There's also a more sudden path. So we have a gradual path of awakening and we have the sudden. So we find this in the history of Buddhism. Tilopa was one of the great Indian Mahasiddhas, the great adepts. Tilopa. And he had a disciple, Naropa, who was getting very ripe, very ripe. He was already a great scholar, already an accomplished meditator. And Tilopa saw he was getting really ripe to wake up. Report an error

29:39 But how to jolt him, how to give him an anomaly that would snap him out of it and get him to come out and view all of reality from a waking perspective. I mean, just about exactly like going from a non-lucid to a lucid dream. So what did Tilopa do? He saw the time was ripe, then he took off his sandal and whacked him. Report an error

30:01 That was odd. That was odd. And that was enough. Then, boom, he got it. Right there. Now, if you think you can start a new school of Buddhism called the Sandal Whacking School, not that many people are that ripe. And not that many teachers know when the right moment is to whack with a sandal. So I wouldn't try it, really. I haven't. I'm just, I'm kind of timid. I mean, I'm a Buddhist nerd. I don't go whacking people with sandals. Report an error

30:24 Then again, they might whack me back. Especially strong guys like Cameron here. Big guys like him. These rugby players. I wouldn't mess around with them. But it may be an anomaly. So there are these two approaches. And now we see, oh, gradual path, sudden path. They're complementary and they both actually work. Report an error

30:40 So, let's go back and finish off our gradual path. There is some value, I think, in seeing... In a way, this is autobiographical for you. And that is, what they're talking about is your own mind and how your own mind can mature, ripen, come to a state of balance. This isn't really so much about Buddhism. Report an error

31:01 It's just... It's saying, this is how, if you cultivate your attention, this is how it ripens and comes to a marvelous state of balance. So that you can view this as your autobiography in the future. Report an error

31:13 So we've looked at stages 5 through 7, which could be done with mindfulness of breathing, that is focusing on the acquired side probably, or settling the mind, its natural state. By the time you're there at stage 7, you've achieved stage 7, then you can see, well, you're sitting pretty. I mean, That's a really good state of samādhi. So if you had not yet practiced awareness of awareness, boy, could you practice that superbly now. Report an error

31:43 I mean, the mind is so well balanced anyway that you might think, oh, I think I'd like to finish off now with a flourish and go into awareness of awareness. And as I said, a lot of the people I've been training, they just threw their own internal shifts. They just kind of gravitate towards awareness of awareness. And then once they're there, they don't want to go anywhere else. That's what I found. And so you may start with awareness of awareness. If you connect with that from the first day, you don't have to postpone it. Report an error

32:10 If it works, you can work. Go. But some people might find it difficult. So whatever way, if you've achieved stage eight, awareness of awareness would be very easy, or stage seven. So transition from stage seven to stage eight. Frankly, this is now, this is water running downhill. Report an error

32:30 It does take some effort, but less and less and less, and it's extremely fine-tuning. So stage A to single-pointed attention, what is achieved here, is that for the first time, your samādhi is long sustained without any excitation or laxity, not even subtle. Not even subtle. I mean, it's just smooth. You achieve it, again, by the power of enthusiasm, and what problems persist is it takes a little effort to ward off excitation and laxity. Report an error

32:56 Well, what this means is, That you just keep your guard up. That is, you just keep attentive. Like if a mother has just scolded a child, okay, don't throw your milk on the floor. Little child, don't throw your milk on the floor. And so the child doesn't want to be reprimanded again. But the child really likes it, makes a big splash. It's fun. Report an error

33:18 But I told you don't throw the milk on the floor. And the mother pours another cup of milk. Don't throw it. And the mother is looking at the child. Don't throw it. Just drink it. Report an error

33:30 That may be enough. That'll probably be enough. Because I'm watching. I'm not going to let you get away with it. So just looking, that's enough to prevent the child from throwing the milk on the floor. But if you were to let your mind attend, then the kid's having fun again. And so just the I'm watching, I'm watching, that's enough to ward off even the subtle emergence of either laxity or excitation. Report an error

33:57 It takes a bit of effort, but not much. Just, I dare you. Report an error

34:05 So that's the effort it takes. And then what attentional imbalance is? Well, they really mean it here. At this stage there aren't any, but there are the latent impulses for subtle excitation or laxity. They've gone dormant, but if you took your mind off, if you got slack, if you got sloppy, they could come right back. You haven't eradicated anything. And now for the first time out of all of these nine stages, for the first time the type of mental engagement is uninterrupted, which is to say it's not interrupted even by subtle excitation or subtle laxity. Report an error

34:34 And for the first time, now the quality of experience is beyond that of familiarity, feeling smooth, deep sense of flow. You've really come now to a sense of stillness. You're really getting very close just to the innate stillness of your own substrate consciousness. And then in terms of the metaphor, once again there's a shift here, a big shift. Report an error

34:56 And that is the conceptually discursive mind is now calm. It's no longer like a current. It's calm like an ocean unmoved by waves. So we know about oceans that are moved by waves. They may be even glassy on the surface and nevertheless there are currents underneath. So there's some subliminal movement there. Report an error

35:15 But overall, the surface, first glance, very still. This is a very pleasant state of samādhi. And yet you still haven't achieved shamatha. You can probably meditate three, four hours, maybe longer, and sustaining this with just a little bit of effort, just to ward off the possible recurrence of Excitation or laxity. But you continue on. And if you continue, then the next one comes. Attentional balance. This is the culminating stage prior to shamatha. Report an error

35:48 What is achieved here is flawless samādhi that you can sustain effortlessly. So it said earlier, it takes a little bit of effort, like I'm watching, don't throw that milk. And here you don't even need to watch. It's so smooth, it's so silky, so free of, what's it called? Friction. Free of friction that is just slick. Report an error

36:16 That's interesting. Oh, there it is. So previously the power of... Ah, that's interesting. The power and the type of. So the power by which you achieve it now is familiarization. And that is, you're just running on sheer momentum now. You don't need to apply any effort at all. The problems persist. Well, there aren't any. But should you allow your samādhi to deteriorate? Report an error

36:42 Should that happen through brain damage or who knows what, it would have to be a very bizarre circumstance. But should that happen, that you really slack off and allow yourself to go retro and fall back into stage 8, 7 or maybe even earlier, then these attentional imbalances could occur in the future. Report an error

36:58 Again, you've not expunged, eradicated anything, but they have really, really gone dormant. And so, attentional imbalances, well the causes of the imbalances are still latent, so they could come up. The type of mental engagement here for the first time is effortless and beyond a sense of stillness is a sense of perfection, like it couldn't get any better than this in terms of samādhi. Report an error

37:21 Well, it could, but the sense is this is great, this is perfect. And now the final metaphor is also even more stable, more still, calm than that of an ocean unmoved by waves. Now the conceptually discursive mind is still like Mount Meru, king of earth. So really still inside, outside, really still. So you've not achieved shamatha yet, but that's a pretty darn good facsimile. Report an error

37:47 Your mind is still lodged within the so-called desire realm, but now it's like nine months being nine months pregnant. I mean, you know, you can break water any time. Report an error

37:58 And it's just a matter of time. So what would be really marvelous, I see this not really in jest, but if you had one or more people who were in stage nine, Then what would be very interesting from a scientific perspective would be to have an ambulance ready, Report an error

38:14 such that if they feel, I think I'm getting really close, I think it could happen like today, tomorrow, then put them in an ambulance and speed them off to the nearest neuroscience lab. Report an error

38:34 And then insert them, make sure you've got it all set up so they're ready to receive. And then as soon as you arrive, have that person slip right into a functional MRI. And now they have technology you can do simultaneously EEG together with, simultaneously with MRI, which gives you a rather three-dimensional picture. Report an error

38:50 And then let them achieve shamatha inside an MRI with an EEG cap on. And then you get some pretty strong functional, that is in terms of MRI and EEG neural correlates, of what's happening. Because something very important is happening in the brain. And Buddhists don't know what it is because we don't have a science of the brain. Report an error

39:11 And we don't have any means of investigating the brain. It was never needed. You can achieve enlightenment without having to learn about all the parts of the brain. But that's not to say it's not important. It is. And so now that we're living in the 21st century and brain scientists are very active and have a very prominent voice in the modern world, then what goes on? Report an error

39:30 Well, we don't know. That's it. This hasn't been done yet. We've not had yet a person who's achieved shamatha in a neuroscience lab. Report an error

39:38 If we have enough contemplative observatories up, one in Tasmania, one in New Zealand, one who knows Kangaroo Island or whatever, that would be a bit remote from a neuroscience lab, but then sprinkled around the world, then the likelihood of this being able to happen would be greater and greater, and it could be very illuminating. Report an error

39:54 It could be very interesting for everyone. But when that day comes, when your water breaks, so to speak, the sign of the water breaking, now we're on page four of the notes, Is that the very first indicator that you're now about to cross the threshold. You're now really about to achieve shamatha. And it's going to be on a very specific date. Report an error

40:15 It will not be sometime last week or last month. It'll be something quite precise because it's a sequence, a fairly rapid sequence of psychophysiological events that create, once again, a discontinuity. That is, over the course of practicing shamatha, time and again you're bound to experience A sense of bliss coming up, bliss, or at least a sense of well-being, and then bliss coming up and then fading out, coming up, fading out. And on other occasions, this really does happen, it's not that uncommon, you'd just be cruising along during practice and then kind of a spike of just incredible clarity that may manifest during meditation but also in between sessions. Report an error

40:55 That is, in between sessions, like somebody just turned your 100-watt bulb up to a 1,000-watt bulb and like, whoa, everything, like you're high. It's a natural high. That the vividness, the acuity, the brightness of awareness manifesting through the senses has just really been upped. And just like the whole world just got a lot brighter. Report an error

41:15 Sounds, smells, tastes, everything. And of course your awareness of the mind, extremely vivid. And that will taper off again. And likewise people will have these spikes of non-conceptuality where they just go into a deep, deep stillness. And it's really sweet. I mean it's really serene. A deep sense of quiet. Report an error

41:33 So pathous understanding. And it's still within the realm of shamatha. And then it will fade and then some chit-chat will come back in again. So you're getting these sneak previews, these preludes, these portents, portents of the salient features of the substrate consciousness along the way, as well as a lot of shifts within the body. Report an error

41:52 Not only weird, nasty things, but also just really major shifts of the body, the energies moving around, stabilizing, equalizing and so forth. So there's a lot of that along this path. It's not all or nothing. There are a lot of incremental changes, spikes coming up, energy surges in the body, surges in the mind and so forth. But this is all leading up to a climax where it's rather like a big dam where first there's just a little springing of a leak, right? Report an error

42:22 And then another springing of a leak. And then a rather large springing of a leak. And then it's tipping over the top, spilling over the top. And then at some point, Get out of the way! Because then the dam's just going to break. And then it's all coming out at once. And it's a rush. It's a rush. Not a bad analogy. So you have a lot of the springings of leakage from the substrate consciousness up into your conscious awareness. Report an error

42:48 Until your stage 9, now the dam's just about to break through altogether. And then on the day you achieve shamatha, then the dam breaks. And then there's some really very powerful and not irreversible, but quite robust changes that take place. Report an error

43:03 And the first one, the very first sign, the dam is about to break. You're about to, don't go anywhere, be where you're going to be, because now it's happening. The very first thing is the experience of a sense of heaviness and numbness on top of the head, which clearly implies there's got to be something going on in the brain. We just don't know what it is, but from a first-person perspective, it's those who have achieved it say it's as if... Report an error

43:27 Just as an analogy, like having a bald head and then somebody placing a warm hand with a bit of pressure on top of your bald head, like that. So it's kind of a pressure, kind of a numbness. It's not unpleasant, but it's kind of like, hmm, what's up with that? Something clearly is happening up there on the top part of the brain. Report an error

43:46 We don't know what it is. That's the very first indicator. And this indicates, whether this is a symptom of something that's very deep, and you're just getting the outermost, it's the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, this is indicating a very deep transformation that's now just getting set in motion. Report an error

44:01 And that is a freedom from what is called technically mental dysfunction and the achievement of mental pliancy and mental fitness. Mental dysfunction is our fundamental proclivity or vulnerability for falling into laxity and excitation, the mind not working. And you're about to be free of that. A real discontinuity, a breakthrough. And in the freedom from mental dysfunction and just that, then to supplant that, there arises this prashrata, pliancy, suppleness, buoyancy, lightness, malleability, all of those packed into this one term, and a mental fitness. Report an error

44:37 And that is an agility also, an agility that arises in that winding path depiction of the stages. When you get to this point, then the monk is just flying off into the sky. He's flying off into the sky. Well, no, it doesn't mean you can fly or you can levitate, but it means the sense of mental buoyancy, and then we'll see more, is so intense, there's just an extraordinary sense of lightness. Report an error

45:03 So that's the first deal. It's the achievement of this mental pliancy. So it's kind of a top-down. You get it mentally first. But then from this top-down, like the placebo effect, which is top-down, it goes from belief, trust, expectation, and then top-down, I mean top-down, this is a way of talking, is from the mind there's a direct impact upon the brain, the nervous system and so forth and so on. Report an error

45:24 And the placebo effect, you believe something, and lo and behold, somehow that triggers something in the brain and the rest of the physiology that brings about the expected or desired effect. Clearly top-down. Well, here's a top-down. The first, number one, this is driven by meditation, not by Injecting chemicals into the brain, that's major top-down. But also experientially, the first experience is mental. This mental pliancy, lightness, buoyancy, and that's having a direct impact on your prāṇa system. Report an error

45:54 So from the mind to the prāṇa system, to your whole body. And so the next real phase here, it's like dominoes, one triggering the next. The vital energies that cause physical pliancy then course through the body. So now there's like a breaking of dam, a breaking down of blockages within your whole subtle energy system here. And those vital energies that give rise to as their symptom, this physical pliancy, this sense like this Geshe Tibetan Lama who achieved Shantideva saying he felt like he could jump over mountains. Report an error

46:28 The physical sense of lightness was so strong he felt as if he could jump over mountains. Well that's what's happening here. When those energies, these vital energies, have pervasively coursed through all parts of the body, you're freed of physical dysfunction and physical pliancy arises, which is the remedy for physical dysfunction. Report an error

46:47 And so it's kind of like a rush of energies just suffusing the whole body, just a total, like sticking your finger in an electric socket, just... A total coursing of energy, free flow of energy through the whole body. And once these energies, these vital energies of pranas, when they saturate the whole body, there's an experience as if you were filled with the power of this dynamic energy. Report an error

47:09 You just feel like an embodiment of just radiant, effervescent energy. So it goes from mental pliancy to physical pliancy. Big, radical energy shift. And then when that physical pliancy initially arises, Due to the power of vital energies, a great sense of bliss arises in the body. So because of this coursing of this energy, then the affective result of that, the consequence of that is not just a sense of energy free-flowing, coursing throughout the body, but then a bliss just saturating the body. Report an error

47:42 One can say ecstasy, kind of an overwhelming bliss, and it's somatic. You really experience it in the body. You're temporarily blissed out. Temporarily, you really can't do much. You're kind of like, ooh, this feels good. And then independence upon that, an extraordinary degree of bliss also arises in the mind. Report an error

48:01 So it goes from somatic bliss, tactile bliss, and almost like a cup that is filled and then just overflows. Then the body just being filled with bliss, it kind of just overflows and the mind is filled with bliss. And so now you're really blissed out, somatically and psychologically blissed out. And for that time, again, you really can't do much except for enjoy it. So, you know, you have to hang in there. But happily, because otherwise this really could be debilitating. Report an error

48:30 One can imagine, if it just stayed there, you could starve to death. I mean, just, and then, you know, and then just fade out and die. So, it'd be kind of like an anticlimax, I think. Happily, it doesn't happen. This is a self-solving problem. And that is this rapturous pleasure. It rises up like this rush. It arises in the body, then it overflows into the mind. It rises up, rushes up, almost like, I think they do this everywhere, like when they're doing big fireworks displays in Sydney Harbor, right? Report an error

49:03 No, in Darlene Harbor, right in Sydney. I think they do it the same everywhere. They give a real nice show, this, this, this, and then they come to the climax. And it's, whoa, you know, getting everything, you know, the best they've got. And it's like, wow, this extravaganza. And once they've done that, then the show's over. But it doesn't just go like chop. Then you see it's gradually flickering out, flickering out, flickering out. Report an error

49:26 And then it's very peaceful at the end. But it gives you a real rush at the end. They want a climax. This is your climax. The rush, the grand finale, is this saturating of the body with bliss, saturating of the mind with bliss. Ta-da! You know? And then it just softens. But, happily, it does not soften into boredom or anything like that. It just softens. The attention then is sustained firmly upon the meditative object. Report an error

49:56 Now you've got this really robust stability. And you achieve shamatha that is freed from the turbulence caused by this great bliss or pleasure. But what you settle back into then is these five jnana factors. And so again, now you're once again functional. Now you can do something. Because you're not overwhelmed by the bliss. So you want to engage in coarse investigation? You can. You want to direct the laser point of your attention here or there? You can. You want to engage in subtle analysis? Report an error

50:23 You can. There is a sense of overall well-being, but which is not disabling. Also a sense of bliss, but it's really tapered off a lot. It's really manageable. It's just feeling really good. And then, ever so importantly, that unification of the attention, the single-pointedness, that you can direct your attention, you can direct it broad, you can direct it narrow. Report an error

50:43 It's now, it's really a mind that works. Tsongkhapa says, now you've achieved shamatha, now you have a mind. Before then, the mind had you. Or you had a dysfunctional mind, which is hardly having a mind. So, now you're ready to go. And so congratulations, you've come to the end of the line. Report an error

51:03 And it would be fascinating, I'm working with a number of neuroscientists around the world, and when the time is right, we get our observatories up. There are a number of neuroscientists who are very, very keen. And contemplatives also, aspiring yogis keen, to look at those nine stages and say, okay, what are the neural correlates? What are the neural correlates for stage one, two, three, four? Report an error

51:23 And you'd need more than one person though, because people do bring their own unique physiologies, temperaments, methods and so forth, diet, exercise. So people are unique. But if you had 10, 20 people that were measured step by stage by stage along the nine stages and each one, okay, what's the EEG? Report an error

51:42 How is the brain changing functionally? Are there any structural changes? That's really possible. Some parts of the brain might grow bigger. That does happen. So if you had 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 100 people, the larger the database, then you could tease out of that what are the consistencies. And then you could have a neurophysiological map of the nine stages, including and plus shamatha. Report an error

52:05 And saying, this is what happened. And then that could be very useful. Finally, the neuroscientists could do something helpful for the yogis. Because frankly, I don't think we've gotten any benefit at all. Years of neuroscience research, we haven't gotten anything. We've just been told what we already know, or things that don't help anyway. Us. So, so far we're helping them, but it's not much very reciprocal. And we're the subjects in their laboratory research. Report an error

52:27 Which is all cool. We want to help out. That's what we're here for. But if they could come up with a map like that, especially an EEG map. Then there's some technology that might actually be useful. Because EEG is very easy to measure. I mean, in principle, it's not that complicated, not that expensive either. The caps are getting better and better and cheaper and cheaper, like so much of electronics. Report an error

52:48 And so then you could actually, if you're on your own somewhere, and you're cruising along and think, oh, I think you have to achieve stage 3. Then, do the EEG messenger, yes or no. You'd actually have an objective reference. That could be helpful. So why not? And then we can have a full-scale collaboration between contemplatives and scientists and then the union of two, namely contemplative scientists. So I got two emails this morning from two exceptionally bright young men. Report an error

53:18 Really bright, you know, like razor-sharp bright. They're both in full-time retreat. And one is right on the course to becoming a neuroscientist but just couldn't, didn't want to continue, wanted to go to Shammata first. The other one could become anything you like. He's so bright. They're both in full-time retreat right now. And they're both in their, like, 20s. Report an error

53:35 So I think that's where the real juice is. Our generation, we can help them, catalyze them. But by that generation, they could go like a rocket. You just need to help them. So I think it's very promising. What I won't do, I think you can, because it's now pretty transparent, state effects of shamatha. Report an error

53:53 State effects, what are they? When you've achieved shamatha, you're hanging out there. What's it like? Here are reports by generations, synthesized, synthesized reports by generations and generations of people who've achieved this. What's it like when you're in meditation? That's all very well, but that is after all kind of a vacation, a time out in the basketball game. But then when you get off the cushion, you're once again engaging with the world around you. Report an error

54:18 Are there still any benefits from having achieved shamatha? Those are called the trade effects. And you can see they're pretty formidable. So I think you can just read those. Report an error

54:29 A brief comment over here on page 5. Report an error

54:35 And that is whether you're wondering in anticipation, you know, well, if shamatha is feasible, how come so people... It seems like very few people achieve it. Why is that? Is anybody achieving it? What does it take? What does it really need apart from simply knowing how to do the practices? Report an error

54:52 This is very non-mystical, non-mystifying, not opaque. It's actually transparent and that is there are certain, it's like baking a chocolate cake. I mean, do you have an oven? Do you have the eggs, the flour, the milk, butter and so forth and so on? And if you do, do you know how to put them together? Report an error

55:09 Then if you do, and all the factors, the causes, the conditions are there, there's just no reason you should be able to bake a chocolate cake. You don't need a gift from the chocolate cake god, or chocolate cake fairies, or a special blessing for chocolate cakes. If you just put together the causes and conditions, then you'll get a chocolate cake. But if you don't put, if you just don't have any wheat, but you just pray, may I have a chocolate cake? Report an error

55:36 May I have a chocolate cake? You won't get one. It doesn't work that way. You don't get it by praying for it. So it's fine to pray for it, but most important, put the causal conditions together. That's what it's all about. And here it is from a classic text by people who've achieved shamatha. The first one turns out to be really gnarly. Report an error

55:54 I mean, in a way, it's trivial. On the other hand, if you don't have it, it's just an enormous obstacle, and that's what I've been watching with the people I've been training for the last four years, is that it's just so difficult to simply find, just have drop into your lap, an environment that is truly suitable for shamatha. Report an error

56:13 But then you look at it and say, well, what's the problem? And the fact is, it's just a problem because unless you're rich, they're hard to find. But let's just run through them quickly. But you really do, for this, you really do need a supportive environment. Otherwise you can just be running into obstacles indefinitely. So what are they? Food, clothing and so on, easily obtained with no problem. Report an error

56:34 So supply line. You're not disturbed by people, loud neighbors, carnivorous animals, black widow spiders, snakes. diseases. Diseases and so forth. You have a safe, healthy environment. The location is pleasant. When you step out from your meditation cottage or your room or what have you, you should be looking at nature. Report an error

56:55 Something that's soothing, pleasing. It gives you some hedonic pleasure just from the beauty of the nature. So outer nature is the best place. And that's not inhabited by enemies. In other words, you shouldn't feel nervous that you could be attacked, you could be harmed. And so forth. You should be very much at ease in the environment. The land itself should be good. That is not toxic, not polluted. If you drink the water, it shouldn't make you sick and so forth. Report an error

57:18 So healthy. And then it is optimal, especially if you're relatively a novice, to have some good companions or maintaining good ethical discipline, their views, their practice similar to you. So you really have that sense of joint adventure, supporting each other. That's very, very helpful. And then finally a location having few people around during the daytime. So again, not having just human noise. And then at night, a little noise at night, especially from like dogs. Report an error

57:44 Or in Dharamsala, the battle between the dogs and the monkeys. They can make such a racket. Gang warfare. The rhesus monkeys and the village dogs, the semi-wild dogs. Man, they can make a racket. And then it's hard to get to sleep, and then if you can't sleep, have a hard time. So there it is. I mean, one looks, well, how hard could that be? But you have to create it, pretty much. Report an error

58:08 It's really hard to find ready-made. There it is. That's a major missing ingredient. Those are the outer circumstances, the inner circumstances. These are the ones that really need some cultivation. And that is, can you go into such a simple environment with basically no entertainment, hardly anything except for the beauties of nature that provide you with hedonic pleasure, So you're kind of going cold turkey on that. So that when you're there, you have few desires, few desires for things that you don't already have. And then to complement it with that, contentment with what you do have. Report an error

58:40 Is this food good enough? Is your room nice enough? Your bed good enough? Meditation cushion and so forth. If you don't have those two, then you'll always be obstructed. You'll just be frustrated. While you're in Shama to retreat, you should really cut off your activities to the bare minimum. So internet. Report an error

58:59 Absolute minimum, maybe zero. And other activities, cool it, simplify. Now be totally focused so you don't have to spend years and years and years in Shama to retreat. Just cut everything back, reboot, stop all your other activities and try to just do this one thing. And while you're doing that, maintain pure ethical discipline. Report an error

59:19 Very important. Body, speech and mind. And then here's the little clincher at the end. Dispensing with this OCDD involving desire and so forth. It says, Report an error

59:31 I remember it in Tibetan. It means, this may be a bit too soft. It says, completely relinquish all compulsive ideation involving desires and so on. So in other words, be relentless in between sessions. Just don't go retro. Don't fall back into rumination. Just be relentless. And it's not by being so tight and wired and intense and militaristic. Report an error

59:53 It's just that... You know, relax. And in between sessions, engage with your natural environment. Be here now. When you drink your water, drink your water. When you're walking, just walk. And just enjoy. Be totally content with few desires to be totally in the present. And let that be enough without having to give you this low-grade entertainment of rumination. Report an error

1:00:15 Just try to be there all the way. So when you go back onto the cushion, it's a smooth transition. I thought maybe just one more point. I want to mention it and I'm very happy not to have emphasized it. But it's absolutely part of the package and I've not mentioned it once. I'm citing from one more classic text written about a thousand years ago by one of the most accomplished, extraordinary teachers, Indian Buddhist teachers, who made his way to Tibet. Report an error

1:00:41 He taught there, I believe it was 17 years or so, 14, 17 years. But just a true master, a great contemplative, great scholar, great bodhisattva. His name was Atisha. Report an error

1:00:52 Revered by all schools of Tibetan Buddhism. They all love him. He was just such, by all accounts, a marvelous human being. And in this, he wrote the first lamrim, a text written for Tibetans that says out a sequence of practices of the stages of the path called Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment. And in this, I'm just excerpting a few verses when he gets to a discussion of shamatha. And he says, but it's really quite remarkable. Report an error

1:01:19 This is maybe two-thirds, three-fourths of the way through the text. With a preamble of developing authentic motivation, bodhicitta and so forth. And then he gives this analogy, just as a bird with undeveloped wings cannot fly in the sky, those without the power of extrasensory perception cannot work for the good of living beings. Report an error

1:01:36 So suddenly he just raised the bar really high. And of course he's not being silly. I mean, I'm sure if you have not achieved shamatha, I'm sure a lot of you have done a lot of good for sentient beings. Of course you have, it's not debatable. But he's not a fool, and he's just, he's now clearly, there's a lot of weight on what does it mean to work for the good of living beings. And that is, can you guide others effectively on a path to liberation? Report an error

1:02:00 Can you be effective to lead them not just to greater hedonic well-being and avoiding hedonic displeasure, but can you have enough insight, expertise, ability? To lead them to the very eradication of mental afflictions, the true causes of genuine unhappiness. And do you have the, are you an expert enough, do you have the ability to lead them individually, not just by reading a book and say this is what it says, to whom it may concern, you may as well have to turn on a tape recorder, but to be able to give individual, tailor-made, like a master tailor, nothing off the rack, but each person gets their own Dharma. Report an error

1:02:35 Suitable just to their needs, where they are in their phase of development, and be able to lead them effectively on the next phase. Well, he's saying without extrasensory perception, you can't. What he's talking about especially is the ability, and he's not even defending this, it was so common knowledge that he didn't even bother. Now, of course, it'd be totally, what, are you crazy? Report an error

1:02:57 The ability to immediately know others' minds, to be a mind reader. That's what he's talking about, essentially. Not to be invading somebody's privacy. I mean, that's just boring. Other people's thoughts generally are just not worth invading. Report an error

1:03:13 But it's rather like coming to a doctor and saying, please, I'm troubled in many ways. I've got pains here, pains there, pains there. And the doctor says, oh, I wish I could help you, but the lab is completely shut down. I can't run any tests. My x-ray machine is broken. My stethoscope is broken too. In fact, I can't run any tests at all. Want to stick out your tongue? Report an error

1:03:35 I mean, really, how much could the doctor do if the doctor couldn't run any tests, any diagnosis? No x-ray, nothing. Not even the stethoscope. And not even the blood pressure. That's some technology, too. Can't even do that. Then you say, well, how can that doctor help you if he or she can't run any tests at all? Report an error

1:03:52 How can you do a proper diagnosis, let it get proper treatment? An existential perception, knowing the other person's mind, is that's your x-ray. That's to be able to look into that person's mind and have a very intimate sense. Where is this person? What would be effective? And so forth. So then he says, focusing on the theme of extracentric perception in a purely therapeutic context or salvific or soteriological context of leading people to liberation. Report an error

1:04:19 He said the merit gained in a single day by someone with extracentric perception. And of course this is coming out of a deep pool of benevolence and not just being clever. Because this is, as I said, about two-thirds, three-fourths of the way through the text. The merit gained by a person in a single day by someone with extrasensory perception cannot be gained even in a hundred lifetimes by one without extrasensory perception. Report an error

1:04:43 It's not just knowing others' minds, there's a variety of types of extrasensory perception that were just universally accepted in India. I didn't know any great scholar or contemplative who denied their existence. It was just common knowledge. But if you do the math, single day versus a hundred lifetimes, it's something on the order of magnitude three million to one. Report an error

1:05:04 So in other words, an awful lot greater. So, okay, exocentric perception, cool. That would be nice to have. Could be very useful. Remote viewing, precognition, other types of exocentric perception, mind over matter and so forth. There's a variety there. And then, how do you do it? He said, well, without the achievement of shamatha, exocentric perception will not arise. Well, it does arise occasionally. A person is just gifted, born with a gift, or just something unfolds. Report an error

1:05:31 We'd say karma. It comes up sporadically. But it can also fade when you've not developed it in this lifetime. It may come up spontaneously and fade spontaneously. Came up, you don't know how. Fades out, you don't know how. But if you'd like to develop extracentric perception in a robust and durable fashion, then achievement of shamatha is indispensable. Report an error

1:05:52 Therefore, make repeated effort to accomplish shamatha. That puts another whole spin on this. And that is, shamatha is also the immediate access to achieving various types of extracentric perception. It could be pretty interesting. Remote hearing, remote viewing, precognition, ability to transform physical things with your mind. So placebo effect taken to another whole level. Report an error

1:06:18 But then he adds, as a cautionary note, as long as the conditions for shamatha are incomplete and they are those prerequisites up above, samādhi will not be accomplished even if you meditate diligently for a thousand years. So it really is cause and effect. Put together the causes, the outer causes and the inner causes. Put them together. Report an error

1:06:37 Bake well for 5,000 hours or so, and then you can come out with a cake of shamatha. When a contemplative has achieved shamatha, extrasensory perception will also be realized. Report an error

1:06:52 If not in that very instant, it's something that's very easily developed with its extremely stable, clear, luminous, supple mind that has direct access to the substrate consciousness, which is then a portal to whole dimensions of reality like the form realm. However, here's the limitation. If one does not cultivate the perfection of wisdom, Insight into emptiness, dependent origination, one's obscurations will not come to an end. In other words, you've attenuated your mental afflictions. Report an error

1:07:24 You've made a number of them go relatively dormant, as you can see in the trait effects of shamatha. But liberation has not been achieved and it will never be achieved if all you do is achieve shamatha without the vipassanā, without the cultivation of wisdom and insight. So the rest is self-explanatory. On that note, I think we're finished with the notes. Let's take a break. Report an error

1:07:43 And come back at 20 minutes past the hour, have another session and wrap up. 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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