Alan Wallace Shamatha Teachings Fall 2010

Alan offers final words and we tearfully say goodbye. The session ends with a big group hug.

Alan encourages us not to be discouraged when life dishes up difficult situations, and instead to bring our best motivation to daily life.

Alan discusses bringing wholesome intentions into our daily lives as a way of letting our minds become dharma. Though we will continue to be mentally afflicted, if we can see our mental afflictions for what they are, we will be able to act on them less and less.

Alan talks about envisioning something new for ourselves as we go back into situations that feel old and familiar.

As we anticipate the end of retreat, Alan mentions that the effects of retreat will not be lost as we go out and engage with the world. Genuine happiness can certainly arise outside of a retreat, as we go out into the world and lead an ethical way of life.

In this talk, Alan encourages us to continue our practice in a spirit of loving-kindness for ourselves. He then answers questions about Arhats, colors of traditional monastic robes, and oracle to the Dalai Lama, Khandro La.

Alan offers some brief remarks on the 5 Dhana factors, as well some of the possible implications of Buddhist mindfulness on memory loss associated with aging. This is followed by a silent meditation.

This time Alan gave us advice on how to maintain protection from imbalances once we engage in daily life activities and that is becoming more and more familiar with the practices of the Four Immeasurables regarding them as our 4 best friends. We should know that whatever situation comes up there is a chance to practice. He shared a marvelous metaphor of 4 mighty horses (Four Immeasurables) pulling the chariot leading to awakening and when one of the horses falls stray there is always another one who helps bringing balance to the one that went off track into a false facsimile. The session continued with a free meditation, and ended with 5 very interesting questions and answers.

Alan offers some brief remarks on choosing which practice we’d like to engage in during these silent meditations. This is followed by an unguided 24 minute Gatika.

On this, the last night of led practice for this retreat, Alan first teaches on how the cultivation of shamatha and the four immeasurables are profoundly inter-related. With shamatha, we withdraw inwards, away from our ordinary identification with the limitations of our physical embodiment and our coarse psyche. Then with the four immeasurables, we expand outwards to identify with all beings. While leading the meditation on equanimity, we are guided briefly through all modes of shamatha and then into the practice of tonglen. Following the practice, Alan speaks at length about benign spirit possession and about the state oracle for the Tibetan government.

This morning we had the last guided Shamatha meditation. Alan explained how in this transient world in which all things that are born have to die, we can tap into the substrate consciousness and even though it is also impermanent in the sense that it changes moment by moment, it is a continuum that carries from one life to the next. It is present even during deep dreamless sleep, comatose and general anesthesia and that’s the reason that we can wake up again. When dying, if you have achieved Shamatha you can follow the process. After the black out if you have Shamatha it will be luminous, then your substrate consciousness dissolves into the clear light of death and you get access to Rigpa. When resting in the clear light there are physical signs that have been witnessed by medical doctors several times, even though the breathing and heart beating has stopped, there is no decomposition of the body, the skin is fresh and the area of the heart remains warm.Then we practiced awareness of awareness directing our a

Equanimity is understood as a sense of composure in engaging with life situations and persons as well as even heartedness. Is an attitude transformation that gives you freedom. Since you conceptually designate, you can change the designation and there lies the power to be totally present, engaged, without grasping. Fully alive, revolutionary! It’s possible since we never leap outside the space of our minds. We then meditated on Equanimity.Suggested that we read the Patience or Fortitude chapter from Shantideva’s “Way of the Bodhisattva” for the occasions when you are mistreated. Be decent. Sprinkle kindness al around you. Wish well to strangers. That’s totally without attachment. There are no Buddhas without patience!.Then Alan spoke on Dzogchen, the spirit of emergence, subjective experiences, the role of information and Prana.

This morning Alan took another stab at modern scientific reductionism – the tendency to reduce everything to an objective, solid reality, independent of an observer. He cited William James’ experience at Harvard Medical School in the 1860s to show that the idea of the brain being the agent – the source of consciousness- actually pre-dated any significant discoveries about the brain and its functions. All along, however, there have been people like William James himself and the entire Buddhist tradition who have claimed that the brain constricts consciousness rather than being its source. This is where Buddhism and modern scientific reductionism clash. According to Buddhist contemplatives and some modern thinkers who are being successfully ignored – in the mind-brain relationship, it is the mind (experience), not the brain (matter) that is primary and not vice versa. We then proceeded to investigate for ourselves, who does what in our own contemplative laboratories.

Alan begins this session with an inspirational story about one of his foremost teachers, Geshe Rabten. This humble lama, who had completed years of scholarly work and consultation studies with the Dalai Lama, found true contentment in life as he meditated under a simple rock shelf. His dedication to this single pointed purpose demonstrates a shining example of loving-kindness as a practice. “Dharma”, Alan says, ”is Bodhicitta. We must meditate on it, cultivate it, and then allow it to flow through us.” This is the dance between the Four Immeasurables and Shamatha practice. Their integration will facilitate us on our path to liberation: “Shamatha is in the service of the Four Immeasurables.”

Today we take an excursion into our experienced sense of being the observer and probe inward to investigate. The practice - awareness of awareness – deactivates the coarse mind, the mind with which we identify. We do our best to do the practice from the vantage point of the substrate. Practiced correctly, shamatha will rise up to meet us. “Our practice here is softening [us] up for vipashyana.” Likewise with all the practices along the path, each prepares us for the next.“Let Buddha-hood rise up to meet you.”

In the Theravada context, cultivating Empathetic Joy (Mudita) is cultivating an emotion. There is so much to take delight in! This will add yeast to life regardless of one’s world view. When we get away from the retreat center we can really practice!In the Mahayana context, the practice is cultivating an aspiration, not an emotion. “Why couldn’t we all be free from suffering, why not?” If we don’t terminate after death, the Mahayana prayer takes on greater relevance. Only from the perspective of rigpa does the prayer take on significance: “I shall see that we all never become separated from happiness”. Alan uses the term, “sacred tension” to define the balance between the wish to be of service and the wish to attend to one’s own enlightenment.The question and answer time included: Are the lamas lying when they say they have no realizations? Is it better to be vegetarian? Alan shared some personal stories about the lovable qualities of some of his teachers.

There are some terms we shouldn’t misunderstand, because if we do, we can waste a lot of time of practice. Alan gave an explanation of such terms: mindfulness, open presence, Rigpa, according to the Buddhist and non-Buddhist perspective in order for us to see the difference. After his brief lecture, this morning we came back into the first method of Awareness of Awareness (4th cycle), where we simply rest in the experience of being aware; a second part of the session followed by oscillating the awareness out into space, and inwards, inverting awareness into awareness itself, sustaining the flow of knowing.

The deepest level of suffering is caused by the three poisons, particularly the grasping to “I am.” While the “message of modernity” is that suffering is inescapable during life, Buddha’s message is that suffering will in fact cease if we attend to its source. To do this we must face our self-grasping. Lucid dreaming is the closest analogy to abandoning the ignorance of self-grasping. You may feel a recurrent pressure during this retreat, as if something is holding you back. This is a good sign! It means you are waking up from ignorance. Shamatha pulls off the layers, forcing us to face the clinging to “me,” the “urge to become,” and to our brand new Honda (Alan’s story is quite funny).Food suggestions and headache remedies: Alan recommends books on Tibetan medicine, “Healing from the Source” (Dhonden) and “The Quintessence Tantras of Tibetan Medicine” (Barry). Alan also discusses a question regarding Shamatha experience within the Dzogchen view.

In the intro, Alan explained the difference between the space of the mind with its 6 fields of experience (dharmadatu) and ultimate reality, nirvana, emptiness, absolute space of phenomena (dharmata). Like Dudjom Rimpoche said: dharmakaya it’s the nature of your own mind. He goes from that and when he talks about open presence, “if excitation arises, then loosen up, if laxity arises, then focus more clearly”. So, within Dzogchen is it possible to take emptiness (sunyata, dharmata), as the object of your Shamatha meditation? The answer is yes, it is hard (you are taking nirvana as your object of meditation), but it is possible. But with the meditation in emptiness you can also achieve relaxation, stability and vividness. All the space between thoughts can be called, in this case, rigpa.

Once more Alan gave us magnificent reflections about the 5 obscurations, which are responsible for the suffering of change. On this occasion he referred to these obscurations from a universal perspective imagining how it would be like to have an educational system where students could receive specific teachings supporting them in overcoming those obstacles. He pointed out that when we throw away the 5 obscurations then our inner resources can manifest. Alan continued with a meditation session and ended with Q&A. The first one regarding purification practices, and how can we know if we have purified. Then a question about the meaning of the colors of his shawl. And the last one about his impressions upon the realizations and achievements or lack of them of shamatha, vipashyana and so forth of Tulkus and Rinpoches.