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Podcast Episodes from Spring 2012 Podcast

Tonight we begin with a primer on lucid dreaming with techniques from modern oneironaut Stephen LaBerge and dream yoga from the Indo-Tibetan tradition. Then we proceed deeper into the practice of awareness of awareness. Alan reiterates the importance for the six prerequisites for shamatha training and describes the process of “rolling back the carpet” of the eight consciousnesses: past the five senses and the ruminating mind, past the obscured mind (manas), greeting our sense of self or “I” (ahamkara), and finally arriving at the alayavijnana.

Meditation begins 34.26

Q&A 58:29

* Different practices, same shamatha?

* Semantics: bhavanga versus alayavijnana.

* The far side of dullness and tiredness.

* Morning and night people, and entering into practice like a helicopter.

* The bashful maiden as a metaphor for thoughts that vanish with the light of awareness.

Taking delight in virtue

Meditation begins 8:50

Meditations starts at 04:50

Meditations starts at 04:50

Meditations starts at 04:50

Meditations starts at 04:50

Awareness of awareness, the simplest of all shamatha practices, requires only the slightest instruction and yet its object can be elusive and indescribable. This evening, we proceed directly into the mediation, then open the floor to questions about the practice.

Meditations starts at 04:50

Q&A:

* My own kind of practice: awareness of a bindu.

* Going up hill in the wrong gear.

* Anarchistic mode of relaxation.

* What awareness of awareness is not.

* Bifurcation of awareness as it drops like hot coal.

* Awareness, elusive because it’s collapsed?

* Moving from the space of the mind into awareness of awareness.

* Three ways of watching a movie, and the gradient of grasping.

Meditations starts at 00:35

The instructions for settling the mind in its natural state are simple: sustain the flow of mindfulness of the space of the mind and whatever arises in it without labeling or grasping. Though it doesn’t entail different stages there are different elements that can be attended to, mental events, subjective impulses such as feelings, and the space of the mind itself. Tonight’s meditation emphasizes the act of differentiating between these three.

Meditation begins at 8:05

Q&A: 33:04

* Meditation and mental disorders.

* The spiritual business model.

* Finding compassion, retroactively.

* Applying the dharma to civil service.

* Derivative benefits of the three modes of shamatha practice.