Aspiring for genuine happiness. Unguided meditation not included. Q&A What do i have to do to achieve stage 4 outside of retreat? What does full enlightenment mean?By Alan Wallace

We proceed directly into meditation with loving kindness for ourself, then spend the remaining time with Q&A. Q&A (at 24:51) * Subtlety of subjectivity in lucid dreams. * Achieving shamatha while dreaming. * Sleep paralysis and false awakenings. * What is deja vu? * Relevance of learning the Tibetan language today. * Unpacking the terms "reality-ba…

We are encouraged to practice the four immeasurables in a spirit of looking back on our retreat and broader past. Then we receive advice around the question, "How do we prepare for death when we have months, days, hours, seconds?" (27:19)By B. Alan Wallace

Enter your practice in the spirit of loving-kindness, particularly when the mind is prone to rumination. Consider the analogy of the horse saved from a burning barn, scared and frantic—never would you be hard on such a horse, it needs only gentle kindness. Only this brief but essential advice tonight, before we practice and open the floor to questi…

How to help people ? What aspects of dharma speak of developing these abilities and is there a first aid guide for specific ailments ?By Alan Wallace

Our shamatha practice can help keep us cognitively tuned while back in the big world, even if we can only practice briefly during the day. In times when we are fatigued from stress, full-body awareness in the shavasana pose is the most healing; on brimful days when the mind is agitated, mindfulness of breathing can bring the best benefit; when we'r…

Alan explains why the four immeasurables build a perfect system by each backing up one of the others. Silent meditationBy Audio

We expand upon the two methods given by Panchen Lama Rinpoche of managing incoming thoughts: in the first, after flicking an arrow of thought, what remains in its place is awareness—a knowing devoid of thought. It's as if you get your own built-in dzogchen master. Phet! In the second method, letting thoughts arise and evaporate, you begin to percei…

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 quality. Silent meditation not included.By B. Alan Wallace

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 polyvalen…

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 MeditationBy Audio

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 realit…

While attending to sentient beings always think... It's because of you're kindness that i have the opportunity to achieve enlightenment.By Audio

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 …

May we be a light that inspires others to draw on their own inner resources! Silent meditation not included.By B. Alan Wallace

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…

Silent meditationBy Audio

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…

Silent Meditation Not IncludedBy Audio

We begin tonight by reading an excerpt by Düdjom Lingpa describing the dzogchen practice of open presence and discussing its similitude to settling the mind in its natural state. The illusions of a lucid dream are analogous to the empty appearances of mental phenomena when settling the mind which in turn is a microcosm of the immeasurably deeper op…

Alan reviews the nature of mental suffering and the strategies for dealing with it in each of the three methods of Shamatha. Silent meditation 23:17 — 48:30. Also, a talk about the ease of retrieving Shamatha-related skills, though they may seem to deteriorate; the "best friends" of the four immeasurables; and our capacities for discursive meditati…

Like an old friend, mindfulness of the sensations of the breath at the apertures of the nostrils, with its gentle undulations, makes us feel at home and flush with well-being. It is a marvelous compliment to the more stirring effects of settling the mind and awareness of awareness. Little is said about the practice before we begin. Q&A * In a begin…

Metta bhavana as taught by the Buddha. Silent meditation not includedBy Alan Wallace

Being mindful of the sensations of the breath at the abdomen can result in a eudaemonic contentment if we release craving for more stimulating pleasures, and simply enjoy watching our body unravel energetically. In this flow, we can progress to the fourth stage of shamatha. It can help our practice to retain the same contentment when we are off the…

The meditative cultivation of loving kindness as taught in the Visuddhimagga by Bhadantacariya Buddhaghosa. Silent meditation not includedBy Alan Wallace

With a new cycle we return to settling the body, speech, and mind in their natural states. In the Vajra Essence, Düdjom Lingpa intimates shamatha can be achieved simply by fully releasing the body, speech, and mind. When we remove all activity, our mind naturally gravitates into alignment, the pranas equalizing into the central channel. But in orde…

We review loving-kindness' distant enemy, false facsimile, proximate cause, and sign of success. What is your vision of your own flourishing? Silent meditation begins at 8:55By B. Alan Wallace

Tonight we plunge right into the practice of awareness of awareness, with the variant of stretching in four directions. Then we discuss the value of familiarizing oneself with awareness, as a portal to the greater depths of wisdom and virtue. Q&A * Cognition fused with dullness in settling the mind in its natural state. * Are the Buddha's teachings…

Might it be that when our resolve is to realize genuine happiness for the sake of all beings we may have confidence and trust that reality rises up to meet us day by day moment by moment? Meditation starts at 31:23By Alan Wallace

Mindfulness of breathing, a active developmental practice, produces skills such as attentional stability which can be said to have a high market value. Likewise, settling the mind in its natural state helps develop such evolutionarily advantageous qualities as the skill to recognize emotional refractory periods. Awareness of awareness, conversely, …

Alan elaborates on the leading question: "Why couldn't we all be free of attachment and aversion for those who are near or far?" Because we are not free of the underlying delusion, that gives rise to craving and hostility. Meditation starts at 07:04By Audio

Three methods of escape when the mind is agitated: send your awareness out into the somatic field, out further into the world of exterior senses, or penetrate inward, deep into our sense of awareness. This evening we practice awareness of awareness and watch closely the tentacles of grasping, the identification with some appearance of the agent wit…

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 5:22By Audio

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 t…

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…

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 kin…

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 …

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 …

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 at 6:37By Audio

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 …

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 12:57By Audio

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 t…

We should ask the simple question: "Why are we suffering at all?" The answer is twofold: 1. We are grasping onto which is not I as being I and that which is not truly mine as being really mine. 2. We fail to recognize, who we really are. Meditation starts at 13:24By Audio

Tonight we add depth to the practice of settling the mind in its natural state with two further modes of mindfulness: #3 absence of mindfulness, and #4 naturally luminous mindfulness. Alan speaks at length about the experience of mental events compared to the other sense fields, and our reifying these experiences with cognitive fusion and conceptua…

We cultivate the aspiration and intention to help all beings become free from grasping even in the midst of inevitable aging, sickness, natural calamity, and death. Meditation begins at 14:52By Audio

We're at cruising attitude with settling the mind in its natural state. Tonight not many words about the practice. We're reminded of the metaphors of floating on an air mattress in Tahiti and a falcon kiting into the wind. It is helpful to remain partially attentive to the somatic field of the body while beginning this practice. Q&A * Where does ho…

Alan shares his definitions of 'spiritual' and 'religious', and discusses 'Mahakaruna' or 'Great Compassion'. Then, we practice developing this aspiration and intention to help all sentient beings become free. Meditation begins at 14:42By Audio

Tonight we finish a set of mindfulness of breathing as we move our attention to focus on the sensations at the apertures of the nostrils. The practice has been explained fully in previous teachings so we proceed directly into meditation. Q&A * [preceding the meditation] How much of the nostrils is a valid target? 25% 50%? * Neurological disease and…

While maybe a specifically monastic theme, its implications are for everyone following this path: "Be satisfied with that what is merely adequate". Mediation starts at 10:38By Audio

Meditation begins at 15:45 Q&A begins at 53:19By Audio