Alan Wallace Shamatha Teachings Fall 2010

Good Morning to All Shamatha Minded Sentient Beings,This morning Alan went into more detail on settling the mind in its natural state. He opened with a quote from Dujom Rinpoche. “Whatever comes up in the mind don’t apply any antidote.” ( while doing Settling the Mind in its Natural State). He also talked about having confidence in oneself and having a balanced mind. We reviewed the 5 Obscurations and the antidotes for them. And then, how being present, relaxation, and looseness are essential for a sense of well being during meditation. At the end, he cleared up an analogy he had told about the maras that he was concerned was misleading. Alan’s closing is “Enjoy Your Day”!Darlene

This evening we return to compassion, with a focus on how Buddhism runs against the grain of modernity in terms of its approach to suffering. We can achieve lasting and total freedom from suffering while still alive; we don’t have to wait for death to bring salvation (as in modern mainstream Christianity), or total annihilation (as in the materialistic, neurocentric view of mind). Then, following the meditation session, Alan answers questions concerning ‘settling the mind in its natural state,’ how to find the right balance between mindfulness and introspection, and how to scientifically obliterate the neurocentric view once and for all.

This morning we began the cycle of Settling the Mind in its Natural state following the instructions that the Buddha gave to Bahia “In the seen let just the seen be…” “In the heard let just the heard be”,” In the mentally perceived let just be the mentally perceived…” So we don’t elaborate or label. We suspend judgment as if you are listening to a fascinating person or are seeing other people’s mind. Reality is speaking to you. Bare, naked. Alan mentioned that the quintessential instruction is to do it without distraction, without grasping. This is a practice without inquiry.We meditated on the visual, auditory, tactile and mental fields.Then he explained Aryadeva’s qualities to be a Buddhist: First: Perception, including hearing, thinking and meditation. Second: Open mind and Third, Yearning to test the practices on oneself.

Alan starts by mentioning that within all physical and mental impermanence, what remains always constant is a person that wants to be happy, loved and smiled back to. The Bodhisattva is a friend of the world! You can practice without having to believe anything; from the Theravada tradition softly sending Loving-Kindness to all; from the Mahayana view expanding the Loving-Kindness until you feel responsible for alleviating the suffering of all beings or, from the Vajrayana tradition, generating yourself as Avalokiteshvara, breathing in all the blessings in the form of light coming from all the Buddhas of the three times and 10 directions, then generating a “super nova” wave of loving kindness that encompasses all mother sentient beings.

This morning Alan used the Russian-dolls imagery (the dolls that stuck within each other) as his mold. First, he applied it to our mindfulness of breathing practice. Settling the body, speech, and mind are all contained within one another. The mind is at rest when the inner voice is quiet. The inner voice is quiet when the respiration is flowing unobstructed, not forced and unconstricted within a properly aligned body, which is relaxed, still, and yet in a posture of vigilance. We then use our introspection to check on the body, respiration and the mind to see if all them are in their natural states.Alan then applied the Russian-dolls metaphor to Buddhism in general. Just as a larger doll cannot fit into a smaller one, so the various philosophies of Buddhism gradually build up on one another. Hinayana is encompassed within Mahayana. Mahayana is included within Vajrayana and Vajrayana (and all others) are contained within Dzogchen – The Great Encompassment. Oh, yes…and his favorite – Science makes se

Once again cultivating loving kindness through the practice of Tonglen, Alan advises to start with ourselves as we concentrate on our own merit and then move outwards to others. As we continue through the practice focusing on loved ones, then neutral persons and finally those with whom we have difficulty, we are really starting the practice where we will end. The ultimate goal is to breakdown all barriers. This meditation is a flow of benevolence for others and ourselves. Listen further for an explanation and a new understanding of Nirvana.

“So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.”1In this short talk Alan gives these succinct instructions; “Have your concentration tight enough that there is not space for thoughts to take hold… Don’t give involuntary thoughts an inch.” He also discusses how to count the breath, rumination, and three sorts of thinking with a not-to-be-missed dog and newspaper analogy.1 James, W. (1899). Talks to teachers on psychology: And to students on some of life's ideals. New York: Henry Holt and Company. P. 76.This book is available as a searchable pdf of the first edition from: http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/JamesTalksToTeachersFirstEdition.html Note the copyright information.

Discursive meditation, because it is repetitive, can become stale. Between sessions, look for sentient beings with whom to interact, each time is a fresh interaction. Add fresh yeast to the practice. Invite more and more beings into the practice. The object is sentient beings. We are generating an aspiration which gives rise to a feeling, not simply a feeling. Alan suggests we envision the aspiration to achieve Shamatha with all the inner and outer requests fulfilled.Question topics include: What to do if good ideas come up during meditation? Is Shamatha the same as Perfect Recollection? Can monks marry? What do we do when a practice bumps us into discovering an uncomfortable memory?

Pressure in the head and headaches are not habits we should build while meditating. Therefore, this morning, Alan gave a detailed reminder of how this should be approached: back to Infirmary. This is by giving special attention to release all thoughts and tension during the out-breath and by focusing on the earth element (sensations of firmness and solidity).The tension might come from the feeling of anxiety that there are only 2 ½ weeks left for the retreat to be over. So, Alan used an analogy on the deva land of Tushita in the desire realm and the Pure Land of Tushita as to be Phuket and the Mind Center respectively, in order for us to understand the different ways of looking at our reintroduction into the world once the retreat finishes.

Following a silent meditation session, Alan addressed a wide range of questions from students:Post-retreat advice regarding refuge, ethics, and the importance of spiritual friends • Can I drink one or two beers without affecting my meditation? • How to adapt yourself to wake naturally at 3AM • How to use meditation on a physical, visual object as a calming technique • Can bodhisattvas or arhats suffer? • Discussion of alternate pronunciations of Padmasambhava’s mantra and the Vajrasattva mantra • What do Buddha statues’ hand gestures mean? • Why are the three types of ethics not taught much in the West?

We started with a silent meditation with free choice on practicing one of the Shamatha practices. Then Alan gave some examples of the path of Shamatha. He joked that commenting on your daily meditation practice as being “bad” or “good” or having “highs and lows” is like the habit of coming home to a spouse and reporting on your day. Alan encouraged us not to measure and evaluate our practice in a hedonic way, but rather to think about what we can bring to our practice in terms of motivation, and to evaluate our performance based on that. He gave the example of a farmer: a farmer doesn’t reap a harvest very quickly; it takes a while to plow the land, sow the seeds, etc. He said that he hopes we will respond to the question, “How is your practice?” by saying that we are doing “GREAT” (GREAT being the acronym for: “Gently but Relentlessly Easing and Arousing Tension”). In Shamatha it is necessary to “tune our instrument.” At times we’ll have to release and tighten the tension. This is the Middle Way.

We started with a silent meditation with free choice on practicing one or more of the Four Immeasurables. Then Alan gave a little bit of advice and encouragement to all the meditators about dealing in a healthy way with all kinds of obstacles that arises on continuous practice. After that there were 5 Q&A. The first one about the practice of the Four Immeasurables, the 2nd, 3rd and 4th about the three methods of shamatha that Alan has been guiding and the last one about controversial teachers and how to deal those issues if we are interested in their teachings. For this last question Alan gave a superb and profound answer that we definitely recommend you to listen.

This evening we return to the practice of Immeasurable Equanimity, with some profound instructions drawn from Karma Chagme Rinpoche, a great Tibetan master and patriarch of the Mahamudra and Dzogchen lineages. Alan discusses the ways in which the Dharma we practice can be conditioned by our sense of personal identity, history and cultural context, and how achieving Shamatha and the Four Immeasurables allows us to free our Dharma practice from this limited context. He also explains the Four Greats, which go a step beyond the Four Immeasurables and venture into the realm of Bodhicitta by awakening our Buddha nature, and an instruction on how to connect their practice with the four times of day and the activities of the four Buddha families.

In this session Alan made an analogy between the practice of visualizing a Buddha image in the first stages of shamatha and the clarity we can expect to have in the first stages of the practice of awareness of awareness. According to Tsongkhapa we should be satisfied with maintaining just enough contact of the image in the first stages. As we progress on the path of shamatha we develop greater clarity and in the final stages we can see the image as being tridimensional and as vivid as in a dream. Similarly in the practice of awareness of awareness we shouldn’t expect to have a high degree of clarity in the first stages, but just enough continuity of being aware of being aware. The clarity and sharpness will kick in until stages 4 and 5. He also mentioned two important steps in this practice. The first point is to release all interest to the appearances arising in any of the 6 domains of experience. You’re not deliberately giving your attention to any appearance, if these arise, it’s ok, but if you’re caught i

Alan explains that Equanimity is similar to the Serenity prayer:God grant me the serenity 
to accept the things I cannot change; 
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.It’s not being indifferent. You remain calm. It’s a state cooled from the flames of Samsara, imperturbable. In Theravada Buddhism is a cultivated emotion. In the Mahayana tradition is an aspiration. Don’t judge people according to their appearances, because that’s where attachment and aversion come from. Neither you analyze persons trough emptiness. You would dehumanize them. So don’t go too shallow nor too deep. Only enough until you find a being like yourself, which wants to be happy and to avoid suffering.

The point of awareness of awareness is NOT to prove that there’s no one who is aware because there is. Not finding any-specific-one who controls the attention and concluding that we don’t exist (and therefore no one else exists) is a nihilistic, not the Buddhist view. Unfortunately, it is exactly that close facsimile of the Madhyamika view that is most often picked up and allied with by the archetypical scientist materialist Alan likes to debate with. “We are just our brains. We are just the summary of our parts. We are our thoughts/cognition” are simple statements that come out of people’s observation to one particular part of the human experience, seeing there is no one there who’s in charge and concluding there’s no one at all. Their disastrous consequences come out of the implied refutation of free will and moral responsibility. Yet, we do make choices or else one couldn’t become a neuroscientist. And there IS a perceiver. The opposite statement begs the question of “who concludes I don’t exist?”T

Alan reviews for us the process of cultivating empathetic joy. It is possible to find many rewards in this practice as he explores the unfolding of empathetic joy in its three flavors: Attending to the kindness shown to us by others, taking delight in one’s own virtue, and creating an aspiration for happiness for all sentient beings. You will especially enjoying listening to Alan’s own personal story of the way he discovered dharma near the end of the question and answer session.

If you want firewood, you can trim off all the leaves and branches and wait for the tree to die and fall over. OR you can cut the tree down at its base - at the root, and you have firewood now. Likewise for investigating the mind: you can go at it intellectually – using logic, forming hypotheses, picking off one idea after another or you can go for the root by way of direct observation, though direct experience of the mind at close range in the practice of awareness of awareness. Urging us on to the practice, Alan invokes our Star Wars hero; “Be like Luke Skywalker going after the death star. May the force be with you… … and the death star is TOAST.”Other subjects include: the Dalai Lama and the book – The Good Heart, a great quote from physicist Anton Zeilinger, atheism, agnosticism, Stephen Hawking, and more. Listen for yourself. See for yourself.

Strong mental afflictions catch our attention. We do not notice good deeds as much as bad. This is especially true of the media. We need to make a conscious effort to have an antenna up for joy. In a single meditation session we can take delight in doing the practice well. Even if our mind wanders, we can bring it back joyfully.The meditation includes the Mahayana prayer: May we all never be parted from genuine happiness and the causes of happiness. Why couldn’t we? May we never be parted from genuine happiness and well-being. May I make it so! May my own spiritual mentors bless me so I may be enabled to help others to achieve genuine happiness!The questions and answers dealt with the “cascading waterfall” of thoughts listed in the Stages of Shamatha and practical suggestions for using insight to improve the practice.

Awareness of awareness is “the most profound practice” according to the Buddha, and he gave us this morning very meaningful advice on how to know we’re doing it correctly.You may wonder that if you’re doing such a profound practice, you should be getting profound results… But, nothing! This doubt comes from an expectation for deep results. How do you know if you are doing this practice of awareness of awareness correctly? You could ask the following questions:1. Are you aware that you are aware? And the answer could be:“Well, yes… I’m aware of what is arising”. But in this practice you don’t have to be aware of anything arising, but instead you have to draw your attention to you, who is aware.2. How do I know?Alan explained this by giving an analogy that if you were taken into a vacuous container (or a deprivation tank), and all your senses were withdrawn, even your mind wouldn’t have any thoughts, nothing… do you think there would still be something? He explained there would still be a feeling or a