In order for us to continue podcasting the 8 week retreats please generously give funds for the podcasts, funds to support aspiring yogis, and/or a gift to the teacher.
Alan gives the remaining two of Buddhaghosa’s fourfold analyses of the four immeasurables, those of empathetic joy and of equanimity. The analyses consist of the false facsimile, the diametric opposite, the immediate catalyst, and the sign of success of each … Continue reading
When performed in the method described by Panchen Lama Rinpoche of letting thoughts emerge and dissolve on their own like a raven on a ship, awareness of awareness qualifies as a practice of shamatha, vipassana, and dzogchen. The latter two require a supplementation of theory and view, but the practice is pertinent to all three and in its polyvalence can contribute to the deep shift in perspective yielded by each. Confidence of correct practice is essential, strengthened by realizations asserted by the experience of a diminishing of the five obscurations. Doing practice that produces pragmatic benefits which linger for weeks or years gives this perfect confidence.
Silent Meditation starts at 45:00
Part 2 starts at 01:09:56
No Q&A session tonight.
Alan elaborates the four modes of enlightened activities:
1. Pacifying color white
2. Enriching color gold
3. Power color red
4. Ferocity color blue
Silent Meditation
The stillness experienced in awareness of awareness is due to the absence of grasping. In sustaining this awareness we are observing nothing other than the substrate consciousness itself, though veiled by the course mind. Compare this to the possibility of observing rigpa while practicing dzogchen’s open presence meditation. We may then know reality is not like a dream, but is a dream; nothing existing from its own side, objectively or subjectively.
Q&A
* Advice on effectively helping self absorbed complainers.
* Comparing Hinayana with Theravada and Mahayana.
* The feasibility of doing a one-year shamatha retreat.
* Practicing gratefulness.
* Which variety of awareness of awareness to practice in a personal retreat.
* Does one realize any emptiness by achieving the first jhana?
While attending to sentient beings always think… It’s because of you’re kindness that i have the opportunity to achieve enlightenment.
As if we’ve become disciples in the 17th century, this evening we listen to the 4th Panchen Lama Rinpoche’s teachings on awareness of awareness. Alan reads this translation to exemplify the uniformity through the ages of these acultural teachings.
Silent Meditation at 40:14
Q&A (1:06:32)
* Evaluating one’s authentic motivation.
* How rigpa relates to karma’s influence of substrate consciousness.
* How hell realms exist.
* Practices for redeeming transgressions.
May we be a light that inspires others to draw on their own inner resources!
Silent meditation not included.
In settling the mind in its natural state we seek to emulate viewing the substrate from the perspective of the substrate consciousness as a cognizant, luminous and unmediated experience of mental phenomenon. On this path we’ll notice thoughts and images carry our attention away less often when they do not have an emotional counterpart; feelings and emotions have a strong draw to cognitive fusion. If we keep a spaciousness in our awareness larger than the emotions and feelings that arise, entanglement can be avoided. Whether the emotion is hostility, anger, anxiety, craving or bliss and pleasure, they can be allowed to arise and experienced without grasping or reification. This practice trains us to recognize emotions in our daily interactions, and allows us the space to respond wisely.
After the meditation Alan recontextualizes his comments about dzogchen’s open presence meditation from a previous podcast, lest it be mistaken that it is only for the advanced practitioner; we learn how to begin planting the seeds of dzogchen practice even as beginners.
Silent meditation starts at 32:49 – 57:50
Q&A
* Comparing the substrate with Jung’s subconscious.
* Rumination cockroaches come out after the lights go out.
In settling the mind in its natural state, by observing mental events without taking interest in their contents we develop a familiarity with their essential nature. By this we receive the benefit of gaining a nonconceptual certainty that nothing in the mind can inflict harm on us, and if strong emotions arise they do not elicit a refractory period. It has also said knowing the essential nature of mental events is the basis for all samadhis.
Before the meditation Alan also gives an introduction to the technique of gentle vase breathing.
Q&A
* How to analyze the nature of mind.
* Insights in settling the mind in its natural state.
* The mind is not a polygon.
* Maintaining cognizance of awareness in settling the mind in its natural state.
* Having preferences in settling the mind in its natural state.
* Finding the origins of somatic correlates.
