Fall 2013 Shamatha And The Bodhisattva Way Of Life

What is the object of mindfulness in the practice of settling the mind in it's natural state? Most people don't get it, it's good to know what you are attending to because your words are guiding your practice. The answer is the space of the mind and whatever arises within it. You still have an object even if nothing arises. Previously we have emphasised the events in the space of the mind but here we shift the emphasis to the space of the mind itself. Post meditation: "Regard all phenomena as if they we dreams". Alan talks at length on this line from the seven point mind training text, analysing the assumption that the world is really out there. Here is a brief summary-extract: It's important to see where out feet are, we are not in Tibet thousands of years ago, but living in modernity and carrying this massive metaphysical baggage: that the world is really out there, everything was there and then we arrived. Even with the instruments of technology, what we are getting is information, which is not physical