Alan Wallace Fall 2012 Retreat Podcast: Vipashyana, Four Applications Of Mindfulness

Teaching: When you understand the causality of how others contribute to your well-being, a sense of happy indebtedness can arise. “How can I do more to repay their kindness?” We can contribute to others’ well-being hedonically and/or eudaimonically. Most altruism in the world is focused on hedonic happiness/suffering, yet eudaimonia is real and can be cultivated. Following Atisha’s advice, we need to achieve shamatha in order to help others find genuine happiness. Genuine happiness is a symptom of a meaningful way of life, a balanced mind, and knowing reality as it is. Someone who acts in accord with genuine happiness—as the center of his/her own mandala—is living in a utopia. Meditation: loving-kindness. Motivated by loving-kindness, settling body, speech, and mind in the natural state. Envision your own well-being, both hedonic and eudaimonic, and attend to its causes. In eudaimonia, your potential is limitless, its very source being primordial consciousness. Imagine it as an orb of white ligh