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We are invited to ask ourselves a question… How does one integrate vastly deepening bliss, on one hand, with increasingly boundless awareness of all beings’ suffering on the other hand…?
Meditation starts at 5:22
With awareness of awareness, the body and speech are settled normally while the mind is given a complete reboot: all concerns are released, attention from all phenomenon is revoked, then that which remains will dawn. We’re given the metaphors of the sailor’s raven and the dueling swordsman. Then the three types of knowledge and their relationship to the qualities of the substrate consciousness and the method of resting in non conceptuality with knowing.
Meditation starts at 21:05 – 46:05
Q&A
* When sensations at the belly are subtle.
* Why Tibetans don’t give forgiveness; how to deal with resentment.
Maha-Mudita liturgy.
Why couldn’t all sentient beings never be separated from happiness and its cause’s ?
May we never be separated from genuine happiness and its causes.
I make this resolve that we shall never be separated from happiness and its causes.
May the Guru, the enlightened ones bless me that i shall be so enabled.
Meditation starts at 25:10 – 49:26
In mindfulness of breathing, the technique of arousing interest during inhalation and relaxing during exhalation is incredibly effective. We apply this technique tonight as we focus on the sensations at the apertures of the nostrils.
Q&A
* Thomas Merton, Chamtrul Rinpoche, and the Pratyekabuddha.
* Three countless aeons, rainbow bodies, and the king, navigator and shepherd.
* Reasons for the sequence of mindfulness of breathing, settling the mind, to awareness of awareness.
* More shrinking lamas.
* Differentiating between the substrate and substrate consciousness.
* Awaiting one’s moment of grace.
Meditation starts at 04:51
For the cultivation of genuine happiness there are certain aspects of reality, the knowing of which does really liberate. Alan mentions the following ‘game-changers’:
To gain insight into impermanence, to gain experiential insight into what are the true causes of suffering and genuine happiness, to gain insight into the very absence of there being some autonomous, substantial ‘self’ – ‘I’ – ‘me’, to gain some realization of the absence of inherit nature of all phenomena – realization of emptiness and finally to realize prestine awareness – your own ultimate ground of being.
Meditation starts at 08:44
Relax! You’ve heard it, you’ll hear it again. We revisit the crucial technique of letting go—of tension in the body, controlling the breath, and attachment to rumination—as we sink deeply in today’s meditation to know the whole body of the breath.
Q&A
* Impermanence of each sensation of the breath.
* “Earworm” infestations during settling the mind in its natural state.
* Idiots compassion, or when imbalance occurs in the trilogy of virtue, wisdom, and the pursuit of genuine happiness.
* Accumulating karma while deluded, such as while dreaming.
Meditation starts at 14:34
Q&A starts at 39:50
Over time, why couldn’t all sentient beings find the genuine happiness that stems from the cultivation of the heart and mind? May it be so. We practice arousing this aspiration of loving-kindness, “may we all experience such wellbeing”. Meditation starts … Continue reading
Settling the body, speech, and mind in their natural state is fundamental to shamatha practice and though it so familiarly begins each session we mustn’t relax our regard for it. So this evening we refine our skill for the technique, culminating with an awareness that is relaxed, still, and clear.
Then we discuss our habit for seeking serenity and stimulation outside of ourselves, when in fact these qualities exist nowhere other than their source in our own awareness.
Meditation Begins 13.46 – 38.10
Q&A 47.05
* How thoughts and images relate.
* Considering we may constitute an intergalactic super-organism.
* Practicing vipasyana before attaining samadhi.
* Degrees of grasping in awareness of awareness.
* Techniques of counting the breath.
* Bringing interest to boring subjects.
* Eyes as a portal to the substrate.
The ‘Greats’ begin with compassion – the ‘Great Compassion’ – aspiring to get everybody’s head above water, so they survive. It is followed by the ‘Great Loving Kindness’ – the very meaning of existence.
Meditation starts at 12:57
Our lives are saturated with desire for attainments of both a mundane and spiritual nature. While giving priority to a spiritual desire will aid our enthusiasm to practice, it may ultimately be fruitless in the context of multiple rebirths if it is not sustained with visionary motivation such as with bodhicitta. It is this benign form of grasping that provides the continuity of coherence in the long thread in the path to liberation. Alan begins with these lessons of ambition.
Then with the guided meditation we bring our attention to the three knowable aspects in settling the mind in its natural state: the space of the mind, objective thoughts and memories, and subjective feelings that arise in their accompaniment.
Q&A
* Can the attainment of shamatha be hindered by excessively striving?
* The difference between dzogchen and mahamudra.
* How should one begin a vajrayana practice.
Meditation starts at 39:07
